Jack Douglas: Lennon's Producer | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Billy Corgan sits down with legendary rock producer Jack Douglas for an intimate, no-frills conversation that runs straight through the heart of classic rock history—from John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Imagine, and Double Fantasy to Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Alice Cooper, the New York Dolls, and beyond. Jack tells the wild story of Lennon recognizing him from a Liverpool newspaper, pulling him into the studio to escape Phil Spector. He breaks down the making of Aerosmith’s first three albums, why some iconic solos on Get Your Wings weren’t Joe Perry, and how Cheap Trick at Budokan (actually Osaka) became a power-pop landmark through sheer studio ingenuity. Along the way, you get rare behind-the-glass insight into working with George Harrison, David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, and what great producers really do: protect the song, the band, and the vibe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices 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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• 0:30Speaker 01

  I mean, crossing the North Atlantic in November is no fun on a little tin can of a ship. Word got out that maybe we had been smoking pot after the session was over, and then Yoko would get pissed off at us. I should call us. And John and I looked at each other, and before I could do it, John went, "Ooh."

• 0:57Billy Corgan?

  In amongst all this, here comes Aerosmith.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  You know, I never said no to them.

• 1:04Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, what was your role in this?

• 1:05Speaker 01

  I was a getaway driver.

• 1:09Billy Corgan?

  Thank you so much for being here. Longtime fan. Here we are together, talk nerd stuff, recording, and of course, the balkanol that is rock and roll. You've been in the epicenter of it now for a good 50, gosh, 50-plus years.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  50-plus years, yeah. Yeah.

• 1:26Billy Corgan?

  So, even though it's the most obvious thing in the world, I'd like to start with the day you met John Lennon, because it seems to me it's the watershed moment of your life. Because the moment you meet John Lennon, your life literally does change.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:40Billy Corgan?

  It's not like you met him and then your life changed later. I mean, your life changed the day you met John Lennon.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it did, but, um...

• 1:47Billy Corgan?

  Is that fair?

• 1:51Speaker 01

  I don't know if it's totally fair because I was on some kind of path already.

• 1:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  But maybe. But had this was unexpected. And, and if you did some research, you probably know that the whole Liverpool.

• 2:07Billy Corgan?

  No, that's the second part of my question, you see.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 2:11Billy Corgan?

  No, because, no, because the reason I say that is because you were on a trajectory, you were already working as an engineer, you were, you were working at the record plant.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20Billy Corgan?

  And you worked your way up literally from janitor on up.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:24Billy Corgan?

  So it's not to discount what you were doing, but I'm saying is that's the day John Lennon personally walks you into a session.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31Billy Corgan?

  And says, can we give this guy something to do? And now suddenly you're working with Phil Spector and all these.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, that it took a, it took, it took a notable change.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  But.

• 2:45Billy Corgan?

  But if it's not, if you don't think it's fair to put it that way, tell me why it isn't fair to put it that way. Cause that's why I asked the questions. I, I, I asked my questions.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 2:54Billy Corgan?

  Assumptions, but.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  It, it did cause a huge change in my life. But I didn't think that day that it was going to be the kind of change that it turned out to be.

• 3:08Billy Corgan?

  I see, I see. But you look, looking back now, do you look at it that way?

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:13Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  For both, for both good and for both bad and tragic.

• 3:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  And, and for me, you know, like led me on a really self-destructive journey after his passing.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  But for him.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  For him to recognize me from a newspaper.

• 3:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Article in, in the Liverpool Echo in 1965.

• 3:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Was very stunning and, and my surprise was that he was surprised to meet me. Like in all the rooms I walked into, here's the guy that was like, you know, we should have been just on the front pages of our local newspaper. We just released Rubber Soul.

• 4:04Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  And there's these two guys on a ship with their guitars and their band from.

• 4:09Billy Corgan?

  So for people don't know the story, I actually knew the story. You and friend go over to Liverpool, nineteen sixty-five. It's the winter, I believe.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, December.

• 4:19Billy Corgan?

  Okay. And you show up on a ship. You don't even have a

• 4:22Speaker 01

  No papers.

• 4:23Billy Corgan?

  Immigration permit, nothing. You just show up and you decide you're gonna be rock stars in Liverpool.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Not even a return trip ticket, but you know, you had that that energy once where it doesn't matter, you know?

• 4:33Billy Corgan?

  It's a it's a kind of a beautiful blind faith or something.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:35Billy Corgan?

  And which turned out honestly to be accurate because that has everything to do with why when you the day you meet John Lennon, you go, by the way, I was in Liverpool once.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:45Billy Corgan?

  And he knows the story. He's like, he recognizes you from the story.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know what he asked me?

• 4:52Speaker 01

  You know, in that picture in the newspaper, I've got a nineteen fifty-five Les Paul custom with a Bixby.

• 4:58Billy Corgan?

  Okay. Was it with the one with the Diadario pickup? I can't.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  No, no, no. This is the original nineteen fifty-five magnesium pickups.

• 5:08Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  The second question he asked me was, you still have that?

• 5:14Billy Corgan?

  See, now there's a musician, right?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  You still have that Les Paul. He wasn't much interested interested in my partner's guitar. He had a Mosrite.

• 5:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Which I don't even think he knew what a Mosrite was. That was, but he wanted to know about that Les Paul.

• 5:26Billy Corgan?

  That's funny that he remembered it.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, right there, I'll send you a picture.

• 5:31Billy Corgan?

  I'd love to see it.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  From the newspaper. But he just thought that it was a like a like a strange moment that he would run into me there. And that I was a guy who had the, you know, the wherewithal to take a trip like that to Liverpool.

• 5:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  I mean, crossing the North Atlantic in in November is no fun on a little tin can of a ship.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  But he invited me in to to work on the record.

• 6:04Billy Corgan?

  Which is the Imagine record.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:06Billy Corgan?

  Produced by Phil Spector.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Right. The reason that John was in the room that I was in was to escape from Phil.

• 6:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  From for a few.

• 6:15Billy Corgan?

  You had kind of a love hate relationship with Phil, right?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, very much so. And in fact, when we were doing Double Fantasy and

• 6:27Speaker 01

  word got got out that maybe you'd been we were smoking pot after the session was over. And then Yoko would get like pissed off at us. And she'd call us. She calls down into her office in Studio One. And John and I would be standing there like two schoolchildren. Why, she yelled at us for, you know, what were you doing? You were, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then she looked at me and she said, she said, you know, I can always get Phil to do this. Said to do these sessions. And John, because John, at this point hated him. I hated him.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  And, and John and I looked at each other and before I could do it, John went, ooh.

• 7:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  It was, uh, yeah.

• 7:17Billy Corgan?

  So, uh, as the story goes, he brings you into the session. You were, you were in editing room or something.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  I was, yeah, transfers in editing.

• 7:26Billy Corgan?

  So he brings you in the session. He says, can we give this guy something to do?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:30Billy Corgan?

  And, you know, politics being what they are, suddenly, you know, you're being elevated into a spot that anybody would die for.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 7:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  I mean, there were two engineers on the date. It was.

• 7:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, and they probably looked at what's he doing?

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, my boss, Roy Sacala and, and Shelley Akis, an amazing engineer.

• 7:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  And they were just like, I mean, first of all, when I didn't walked in the room, they said, well, what are you doing? And all I could say was I'm with him.

• 7:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, my new buddy.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:58Billy Corgan?

  My new buddy, John.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  And, and, um, he, for some reason, he took a liking to me and would ask me to do stuff.

• 8:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Eventually, he, uh, he asked me where I lived. I lived in the village. He lived in the village on Bank Street.

• 8:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  He, he gave me a ride home a few times. He asked me if I knew a restaurant he could go in a back door in Yoko. We did that a few nights and then one night he called me up. He asked me for my phone number. He called me up and he said, uh, said, I have to go to this party. There's, uh, all these kind of nutcases here. I just want you to keep an eye on things. Cause I don't know them personally. It was Abby Hoffman and that whole.

• 8:38Billy Corgan?

  Oh, it was that whole world, yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  That whole crew and, um, And they were talking in this apartment, off the pig and they were talking about violence.

• 8:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  And he was getting drunker and drunker.

• 8:51Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that's also what got him investigated by the, was it the FBI?

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:55Billy Corgan?

  Because they was hanging out with these dissidents.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, so you got yourself in all that too.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  They were using him, really.

• 9:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that's pretty obvious in, in, in hindsight.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  But um, he, he made quite a scene at that party. Uh, he grabbed a knife in the kitchen and went at this woman who had been yelling to off the pigs. And, and he was like, you want violence? I'll show you violence.

• 9:21Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  And then, uh, and then we left.

• 9:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So, uh, how was Phil Spector? Uh, two questions. What did you think of Phil Spector? I mean, I'm not talking about necessarily by reputation when you're walking in. Were you a fan?

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 9:40Billy Corgan?

  But, but I mean, now you're working with Phil Spector, at least you're in his proximity. And this is, you know, this is John just after the Beatles. This is, you know, and, and, and Phil Spector is still Phil Spector.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I was, um, I was rather disappointed, uh, because I had a lot of respect from him. I loved his records and

• 9:59Billy Corgan?

  Especially growing up in this

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and

• 10:01Billy Corgan?

  Part of the world.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Right, and Ronnie was there very frequently out there. And, um, and Phil was frequently, uh, quite drunk or high. Um, sometimes he would be kind of half asleep at the end of the board. And I watched, uh, Roy Sacala very subtly take over the production of the record. Phil would lift his head every once in a while and go, more reverb.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  And, and, and I had no respect for Phil after that.

• 10:37Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Until I worked on, uh, the Christmas song. At that point, and John had no, you, John treated him badly and argued with him constantly.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  And I learned a great deal about how to work with John from watching those sessions. But, but uh, uh, when we did the Christmas record, Phil was totally in his element. And that to me was like the most successful I'd seen Phil work with John. It was just, it's a Phil Spector production.

• 11:10Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. What's that live, I don't know, magical thing that he would do where he would just be?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, look, he had, he had, uh, four acoustic guitar players in a circle with a, with a, a, a mic and Omni in the middle. They're all strumming the same thing. I mean, that kind of.

• 11:29Billy Corgan?

  And no one ever did that better.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 11:32Billy Corgan?

  Whatever that was.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 11:34Billy Corgan?

  Cause it's, it's, it's, there's a science, I'm sure, but the, but the magic is knowing what works or something.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, you know, playing the tracks out over the, the, uh, the monitors in the room.

• 11:48Billy Corgan?

  Oh, feeding the tracks back into the room?

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:50Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Uh, during overdubs.

• 11:53Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, that kind of stuff.

• 11:55Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So did you, I mean.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  A big choir of, you know, kids and.

• 12:01Billy Corgan?

  But back to Imagine, you know, and I don't know where in the sessions you came in the sessions when I think, uh, I wrote it down, but it's like February to July of 71.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:10Billy Corgan?

  Somewhere on there. But so, but you know, in any given time, George Harrison's on the record.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:15Billy Corgan?

  Uh, Nikki Hopkins, Claus Vorman's playing bass.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 12:19Billy Corgan?

  Um, Keltner's playing drums.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 12:22Billy Corgan?

  Uh, who's the other drummer? Alan White?

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Alan White, yeah.

• 12:26Billy Corgan?

  Yes, Fame. And that's a pretty interesting group of musicians too. You know, you're not just working with John Lennon, you're working with like a pretty A crew of talent.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I, I think I underappreciated it. I was so like nervous to do, actually be there doing it. That I just treated it like I was working with session guys.

• 12:47Billy Corgan?

  Ah, okay.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Like I was working with, you know, Steve Gadd and Tony Levin.

• 12:51Billy Corgan?

  Sure. So in a given day, were you miking? I mean, were you?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was miking.

• 12:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  You know, lucky I had been mentored by Roy Sacala. So that I knew.

• 13:03Billy Corgan?

  So you were already in.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  I knew his miking technique.

• 13:05Billy Corgan?

  And that would be a big deal if you're coming in as sort of a.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, he didn't have to tell me what he wanted on a. I mean.

• 13:12Billy Corgan?

  I mean, you and I understand studio politics, like an outsider just can't walk in.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I wasn't so much of an outsider.

• 13:19Billy Corgan?

  That's my point.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:20Billy Corgan?

  That's the point I'm making. If you were just some guy he found on the street.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 13:24Billy Corgan?

  It would have been a disaster.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:26Billy Corgan?

  Even if you were a genius, you're suddenly.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:29Billy Corgan?

  You're an ingator. But because you're part of that family, okay, now, okay, you're.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:34Billy Corgan?

  Give me it.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  And I was, and I was Roy's baby.

• 13:42Billy Corgan?

  I wanted to touch a little bit when you were in Liverpool in sixty five, going into sixty six, because you were there for a brief time and, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you guys started doing gigs when you weren't supposed to in the

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:55Billy Corgan?

  trouble and shipped back out.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:57Billy Corgan?

  But did you see any, any artists play around that time?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, we did. We hung out at the, the original Cavalry Club.

• 14:03Billy Corgan?

  I mean, what an incredible time to be there.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  It was amazing. I mean, it was like a dream come true. You know, it was, um,

• 14:11Speaker 01

  it was better than anything I could ever have imagined.

• 14:15Billy Corgan?

  Well, you can argue it's the greatest moment in rock and roll.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:18Billy Corgan?

  History is that period of time.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  And we would, we would hang out at the Cavalry. The big plus of coming back, because I was already a working musician, but small time.

• 14:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Locally. Um, but when I came back from Liverpool, uh, I had cred.

• 14:37Billy Corgan?

  Uh.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  I, I was a guy that had.

• 14:39Billy Corgan?

  It's a Beatle, Pixie Dust time.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Been to Liverpool and, and, uh, and we both, Eddie and I, we both hooked up with the Angels. My boyfriend's back.

• 14:49Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  And, and went on the road with them and playing guitar, playing bass.

• 14:53Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  And we did a bunch of road gigs with the Angels.

• 14:58Billy Corgan?

  That sounds pretty fun.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  But Liverpool, I wish I could remember all of the bands that I saw down there.

• 15:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  We were playing in the suburbs with a, you know, a pick up, a band that picked us up.

• 15:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  We were kind of famous. Uh, but within two weeks, we were busted.

• 15:17Billy Corgan?

  You went viral, basically, in the modern parlance.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Yes. And, and we, we, we left in shackles. On a train to Southampton.

• 15:29Billy Corgan?

  So when you were young, somebody gives you a reel to reel tape recorder and this sort of begins your fascination with sound and.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  That's right. My father did.

• 15:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. And you started doing all these like these music concrete, you were recording different things. Were you editing the tapes and?

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, I also, uh, uh, was putting my guitar, the mic, uh, into the acoustic guitar I had and I was recording my guitar in there as a kid and letting it feed back and getting all these sounds and.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  You know, I was crazy about the whole thing. It was, it was, you know, cheap tape recorder that my dad worked in a freight yard. So things used to fall off freight cars.

• 16:14Billy Corgan?

  As they do.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  The whole neighborhood. He sold TVs and radios to the whole neighborhood. I lived in Bronx. But he thought he was getting me a record player because I used to drive my parents crazy wanting to use their record player as a kid and playing my, you know, Bozo Under the Sea, The Tortoise and the Hare, Uncle Remix.

• 16:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  The Song of the South.

• 16:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Uh, so, and, you know, and they just wanted to listen to their big band records, my father's opera stuff. So my father, when he went into the freight car to get, he thought it said record player. It said recorder.

• 16:56Billy Corgan?

  Ah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  And it was a web core. Yeah, good brand.

• 17:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, bad.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  It was something that came in from Chicago.

• 17:03Billy Corgan?

  Did it?

• 17:04Speaker 01

  And.

• 17:04Billy Corgan?

  That's right. I think it was from.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and, um, and he pulled that out and we didn't know until I opened the, the press.

• 17:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  That, uh, cause he put it in, he had it in a bag and he put the bag under the bed.

• 17:19Billy Corgan?

  Well, actually a reel to reel at that time would have been more valuable than a record player.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, uh.

• 17:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  I wanted a record player, but this turned out to be much better.

• 17:28Billy Corgan?

  Well, it worked out. It worked out.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:31Billy Corgan?

  So, um, at what point do you make this transition sort of psychologically like from I want to be a musician to I want to be on the other side of the glass and recording and.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Uh, the, the last band I was in was a group called Privilege.

• 17:46Billy Corgan?

  Hmm.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, and I've been in.

• 17:51Billy Corgan?

  Is this the, is this the Isley Brothers?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:53Billy Corgan?

  T-Nec records.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, they produced us.

• 17:55Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  And I didn't, uh, and we recorded at A and R Studios.

• 18:00Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Uh, Phil Ramon's played.

• 18:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  But it was a wrong combination.

• 18:05Billy Corgan?

  What kind of music?

• 18:06Speaker 01

  They were.

• 18:07Billy Corgan?

  Cause there's not a lot of information on that part of your life.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, it's kind of psychedelic psychedelic. We wanted to be Led Zeppelin, but a New York version with a Hammond organ.

• 18:17Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  So it was kind of blues based psychedelic. Uh, I played.

• 18:24Billy Corgan?

  More psyched, more psychedelic than vanilla fudge, say?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  More like that, but more, more blues based.

• 18:29Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  More Led Zeppelin-y.

• 18:32Billy Corgan?

  Cactus.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, cactus, fair.

• 18:36Billy Corgan?

  Trying to deal like locate you.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Part New Jersey.

• 18:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Part New York.

• 18:41Billy Corgan?

  Cause there was a cool hard rock thing happening in this, we're in New York, but there was a kind of, there was, it was different here in terms of heavy music than say Detroit, Chicago.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Well, I had, after I quit the, the, uh.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  One band in Florida that I was playing with, I joined a Canadian band that was called The Liverpool Set. They were already, now, not one of these guys had ever been to Liverpool.

• 19:10Billy Corgan?

  That's why I'm laughing, because I already know where this is going.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  I was the only guy that had ever been there, and I'm the only American in the band. They were from Latvia, Scotland, England, and of course, Canada. And they were based in Toronto. In the days in Toronto, when, uh, when The Village was really something.

• 19:31Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  The Checkmates, and the, you know, the Mandela, and, um, and so, uh, uh, we wanted to get, we wanted this drummer from a group called The Minor Birds.

• 19:44Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  That, uh, um, so some famous people in that band, but we got him. He was English. And, um, we got, uh, we, we got the, we got the piano player from Ronnie Hawkins.

• 20:02Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  The Hawks.

• 20:04Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  His name was Scott Cushney. He wanted to leave because when they were playing La Cocteau on, on Young Street, Ronnie would crank him up, you know, part of it, and make him play really fast. Uh, so he didn't, he wanted out. We got him. Uh, interesting enough, I, Scott Cushney ended up in Aerosmith for a while because he's the piano player on Big Ten Inch.

• 20:30Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  But, but anyway, he, uh, interesting story. I was just working on a documentary about him. He, he was called Doctor Piano or something. He had a great reputation in Toronto.

• 20:42Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  And, um, and, uh, he played Thursday through Sunday at a club. When people came into town, they'd always end up jamming with him, Scott Cushney.

• 20:54Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Um, and, uh, and so I got a message, this is a couple of years ago, he's disappeared. He was blind also. He disappeared. And I'm like, Scott disappeared? He, he could see, kind of, he had Coke bottle glasses.

• 21:10Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  He knew how to get home all the time. He didn't make it home this one day. And so he disappeared. And, um, now he was gone for months. It was all over Canadian news.

• 21:23Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Scott Cushney, Doctor Piano, disappeared.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  So they thought, well, he must have drowned. He must have this. So it ended up, uh, at some point, he was in the hospital. He had fallen. And he, his face hit the curb and it completely disfigured him. And he was in a coma and he finally passed away. These people came in, they were looking for their uncle or somebody who had disappeared that same week. And they identified Scott as their uncle.

• 21:57Billy Corgan?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  And, um, and they gave him a big Greek Orthodox.

• 22:05Billy Corgan?

  Sorry to laugh.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. And buried him. Now he's missing for like a really long time. You know what happens? The uncle shows up.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  And they're like, oh, my God, who do we bury? Scott Christian.

• 22:17Billy Corgan?

  Never heard a story like that. That's crazy.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Scott Christian. Anyway. Uh, so I was in this band. We were signed to Columbia. Uh, we recorded in Nashville, made a couple of hits.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  And we played the craziest places you could ever imagine.

• 22:36Billy Corgan?

  Now, is this Privilege or this is the Liverpool?

• 22:37Speaker 01

  This is Liverpool set, yeah. But we did play the summer of sixty-six or sixty-seven at Tony Marks. Did you ever hear of Tony Marks? Oh, it's a fabulous place on the Jersey Shore.

• 22:52Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  You know, it's like a dream to play there. I once asked Bruce, did you ever play Tony? He said, I dreamed of playing Tony Marks. I was just slightly too young.

• 23:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  And, um, and played there. It was great. And then, uh, I had another band after that called Waterfront.

• 23:12Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  And which became our production company for some years. And we were signed to Epic Records.

• 23:21Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  But they changed our name to The Swamp Seeds.

• 23:25Billy Corgan?

  So there's none, almost none of this history is available where I looked.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  So, uh, and then the Swamp Seeds.

• 23:31Billy Corgan?

  So I would have done my research. I would have gone.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, Swamp Seeds morphed into, uh, Privilege.

• 23:36Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  And we went from Epic Records to, uh,

• 23:42Billy Corgan?

  Te neck.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Te neck.

• 23:43Billy Corgan?

  Which was their Isley's private imprint.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, well Buddha records.

• 23:48Billy Corgan?

  Right, okay, yeah, right.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  You know, even earlier in my, in my later teens, I was writing for Kennedy.

• 23:57Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  So I already, I already had, you know.

• 24:02Billy Corgan?

  This is President Kennedy, yeah, that's just Kennedy.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  No, Robert Kennedy.

• 24:06Billy Corgan?

  I'm sorry, Robert Kennedy.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  He was running for senate.

• 24:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  In New York and I was writing campaign songs and then warming the crowd up.

• 24:13Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  On a tour.

• 24:14Billy Corgan?

  Right, but again, sorry, because I'm glad you told me all this because I couldn't find any of this information.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:19Billy Corgan?

  I love this type of stuff because I love the musical journey part of it, but like, at what point do you go, okay, I'm done as an artist and now I just want to be on the recording side.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  I think because.

• 24:28Billy Corgan?

  That's a hard, that's a hard, that's a hard psychological thing for a lot of musicians to get over when they go out of, you know what I mean? Like we worked when we were young, we worked with Butch Vig.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:41Billy Corgan?

  Who had done two, had been signed to a couple of labels, both bands didn't kind of work.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 24:47Billy Corgan?

  So when we're working with him and he's working with us and Nirvana, he's kind of somewhat bitter on some level that his musical life didn't work out the way he wanted. Eventually he formed Garbage and had a lot of his own success as an artist.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:00Billy Corgan?

  Most guys or girls who make that transition, there's always that kind of feeling that they didn't get out of it what they came in to get.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Oh, I never felt like that.

• 25:07Billy Corgan?

  That's why I'm asking you.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, for me, it was all a great adventure from, from start to wherever I am now, you know, it's like.

• 25:17Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  I, I could never figure that it would, you know, each step would be more enlightening.

• 25:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  I started, I started that I wanted to, to score film.

• 25:33Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  That's what I studied in school, theory and composition and.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  And even while I was the janitor at Record Plant, in at night, I was a client because I was scoring the ABC after school specials.

• 25:52Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  I was writing the music for that show. So I wasn't sure exactly, you know, which path. And now I'm scoring film constantly.

• 26:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  So I wasn't sure where, where, where I was.

• 26:06Billy Corgan?

  It kind of explains, Sunita, you tell me that that helps because it sort of explains the cinematic aspect of some of the productions that you've done, some particularly some of the most famous ones, particularly when I think of Aerosmith.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 26:18Billy Corgan?

  There's a cinematic quality to the way that you produce them.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Also,

• 26:24Billy Corgan?

  Does that ring true? Does that ring true to you?

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it does. First of all, if you, if you're looking up at the monitors, when I look at the monitors, I see a movie. You know, I'm, I'm seeing this band in a movie up there and, and, and I'm watching, you know, each of the strings of the guitar becomes a live thing and the drums become an image in a live thing. And so.

• 26:50Billy Corgan?

  Maybe you're just a dataist at heart.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Yes, could be. I think so.

• 26:55Billy Corgan?

  It's kind of a dataist mind, the way you describe it even, you know, and even the idea of cutting tape up, playing with sound.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, when I was working with Bob Ezrin on Billion Dollar Babies, there's a song on there called I Love the Dead. And, and we were mixing that thing for forty hours straight. Bob said, I'm, I'm so tired. I, I, I'm gonna go get a couple of Z's back at the hotel. You work on it for a while. I was already wiped out. It was right around Christmas. Just before Christmas and I was like, okay, um, maybe it just, I'll take this mix. I'll do some editing. Maybe I come up with something. We've got all this.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  So I took a couple of mixes and I pinned up all these different pieces that I thought were good up on the wall. Chorus from here, verse, it's second verse, uh, middle eight. And, um, and I put my hand in my pocket and there was a pill. And I'm looking at the pill and I said, who gave me this damn pill? Oh, this girl, she's a speed freak gave me this pill. This will work great. You know, it was a capsule. It must be speed. Just what I need really to get me through the next three or four hours to put this together. It wasn't, it was, it was, um, uh,

• 28:23Speaker 01

  some kind of psych psychotic.

• 28:26Billy Corgan?

  A psychotic or a psychedelic?

• 28:27Speaker 01

  A psychedelic.

• 28:28Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  It was a psychedelic of some kind, maybe mushroom.

• 28:32Billy Corgan?

  Yep.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Uh,

• 28:35Speaker 01

  so anyway, I, I'm, I'm trying to edit and, and I'm editing on a, on a 440 Ampex, which is a low kind of machine. But when I looked down, my arms suddenly got 10 feet long. I'm rocking the reels and, um, anyway, I put it back together best I could and one piece of it's backwards. And Bob came in, I was now out sound asleep. Bob came in, he turned down the machine, listened to it. He goes, brilliant, perfect.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  So that, uh,

• 29:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So is Bob who really, Bob Ezrin, really encouraged you to really become, think like a producer, right?

• 29:18Speaker 01

  He, he did. He told me that I was a producer because, uh, of that first Dolls album.

• 29:24Billy Corgan?

  Hmm.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Uh, because Todd wasn't there very often, nor did he care much about the record. It was not a good fit. Uh, because the Todd's, Todd's production style was so beautifully clean and

• 29:40Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  the harmonies are always so perfect. I remember we were doing Personality Crisis or Trash or one of these things. I, I knew all those guys. You know, I, I hung out at Max's and I knew the scene and, um,

• 29:55Speaker 01

  And so I got the gig so that there would be somebody they could relate to that they knew.

• 29:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  And, and of course, Lieber Krebs managed them. And so we're doing one of those songs. And Todd turns to me, he says, it's really awful. And I said, well, you know, it's not that they don't play that well, but when it's all together, it's kind of a really cool sound. It's something about.

• 30:21Billy Corgan?

  It's what we would call my band a vibe.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, a vibe. So now, so now, the band comes in and

• 30:31Speaker 01

  and they're like, you know, half of them are stoned. Johnny Thunders, I didn't even think he came in. He went straight to the bathroom. And David comes in last. David had been doing a live vocal just to get to keep the band going.

• 30:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  And David, who was a very close friend of mine, I'm so sorry.

• 30:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, just passed away.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  David comes in and not knowing what to say, Todd said to him, you know, this is going to be really good when we put some harmony on there. And David looked at me and he said, harmony? Are you accusing me of having melody? I thought that was the last one I'd ever heard.

• 31:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  And, you know, he was taking the piss, but

• 31:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  It was really wonderful. Anyway, so Bob would stop by every once in a while to see how that was turning out in there. And he combined Todd. We have to, we had to keep the label out a lot of the times so they wouldn't know. Mercury Records, that there was nobody in charge, that the inmates were running the asylum at that point, but we were getting it done.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  But after that, he said to me, you know, you're a producer. You, that's what you're doing on the record.

• 31:48Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  You know who my assistant was on that for? Jimmy Iovine.

• 31:53Billy Corgan?

  What did he ever do? Did he ever do anything?

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Um.

• 32:00Billy Corgan?

  So you have these interesting experiences with Lennon's and Yoko, John and obviously John and Yoko. And then, you know, there's other things you get into like Edward Hawke, Edwin Hawkins,

• 32:15Billy Corgan?

  LaBelle?

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Well, I did LaBelle's, I did her demos. I also did, and I was just reading about it because I've, I also did Billy Joel's demos to get his,

• 32:24Billy Corgan?

  Oh, wow.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  For where he got his deal from, just piano and vocal. And Artie Rip had paid for the session. And Artie came in with Billy and,

• 32:38Billy Corgan?

  And Billy was just, he'd been in some kind of psychedelic band too, right?

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was in the Hun's or something. He wore horns.

• 32:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  But he was also, he was also in the Hassles, which was very much like the Vanilla Fudge.

• 32:49Billy Corgan?

  Okay. Oh, that's right. I've heard that stuff. Yeah.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, very much like the Vagrants. Another East Coast ham group.

• 32:59Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Leslie West was the leader.

• 33:02Billy Corgan?

  Ah, yeah.

• 33:04Billy Corgan?

  I love Leslie West.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's great.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  So,

• 33:12Speaker 01

  you know, it,

• 33:15Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, what were we talking about?

• 33:17Billy Corgan?

  No, I guess what I'm trying to point you at is, you know, now you're in the hustle, like you're in the game.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:23Billy Corgan?

  I mean, now you're now, but, but with,

• 33:26Speaker 01

  The Who?

• 33:27Billy Corgan?

  Right. I was getting there too. But I mean, with Bob Ezrin's encouragement, now you're taking these experiences. You worked with The Who on Lifehouse sessions.

• 33:37Billy Corgan?

  You know, you've, you've got your foot in it now. And the way the business works is once your name gets around, people start saying, do you want to, you know? So, did you, did you come into it with a philosophical approach? Because there was kind of a, it seems like around that time, and you tell me you were there, but it seems like a, not a back to basics, but kind of more of an organic vibe to the records. Is that, is that?

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Oh, very much so. Very much so.

• 34:01Billy Corgan?

  Did you, is that something you were interested in? You were a proponent of? Or was that sort of of the time?

• 34:07Speaker 01

  That, well, that was a school that of, of recording that goes back to Al Schmidt and Phil Ramone.

• 34:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  And, and the philosophy was,

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Go out and listen to the instrument you're about to record. And then come back in the into the studio and recreate that sound as best you can so that you can see that instrument in front of you.

• 34:35Billy Corgan?

  That really explains it because the world I grew up in, we didn't think like that, but I, when I go back and listen to those records, I could never understand sort of philosophically where that was coming from.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:46Billy Corgan?

  Because to us, especially as kids listening to records, my dad, my daddy was a musician. So I heard a lot of music when I was a kid too. It always seemed kind of very, uh, not clear, but defined, you know, it's like good sound was a big part of that, that logic. But, you know, in Chicago was about the blues. Everything was like over amplified, over distorted. So to us, the East Coast thing was always kind of the, you know, the Phil Ramone, like almost too clear, too, too defined where we were growing up with everything over, overhanded.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Well, then, all right. So this was passed on to Royce Cala Cheliakis. Then their philosophy, in particular Shelley, was now you've got the, all of these instruments that sound like the instruments that are out in the room. Now make it sound like a record.

• 35:38Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Add the magic to it.

• 35:40Billy Corgan?

  Okay. So the magic is?

• 35:41Speaker 01

  The compression, the EQ, the, the reverb, the delays, all those things that make it have that magic. Don't go completely crazy.

• 35:51Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Be subtle with it and, and, and it'll work out great.

• 35:55Billy Corgan?

  That helps me understand because, because, um, particularly your work with Aerosmith, it's got a particular feeling to it. You know, where a lot of guys would have gone maybe the other way into aggression.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:08Billy Corgan?

  Your work has a lot of beautiful definition that holds up really, really well over time.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  It's quite dry, actually.

• 36:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that too, which for the punter in the room means you're not adding reverbs and,

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:20Billy Corgan?

  and undo ambience. Back then you would have used plates and, but.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Right. Also leakage was important to me.

• 36:26Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Like, uh, if I put the bass in a booth, I always opened the door to the booth.

• 36:32Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  And let that big wave.

• 36:34Billy Corgan?

  You like that.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  That big wave will leak into the drums. Yeah.

• 36:38Billy Corgan?

  So, um.

• 36:41Billy Corgan?

  In amongst all this, here comes Aerosmith.

• 36:46Billy Corgan?

  What was your first impression of them?

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Well, being such a Yardbirds fan.

• 36:51Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  I immediately.

• 36:53Billy Corgan?

  You got it.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  I got it right away. And, and when I went up to Boston to see them, by the way, they wanted Bob to produce that record.

• 37:03Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  And.

• 37:05Billy Corgan?

  Was it because he was more of a name or?

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was, he was a big name.

• 37:10Billy Corgan?

  But he's, but he's Canadian. See, that's how we said.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I'm also, I'm a landed immigrant.

• 37:15Billy Corgan?

  That's a joke for all our.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  I'm a Canadian landed immigrant from working up there. They're just, I got landed immigrant status.

• 37:21Billy Corgan?

  Become Canadian by.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  But, but Bob didn't think they were ready.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  After hearing the first record and, and Lieber and Krebs also managed them and the Dolls. And they were looking to give me the prize that I deserved for making sure that the Dolls album got through.

• 37:48Billy Corgan?

  So you got that gig because.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  That was, that was, that was my, my, my prize.

• 37:53Billy Corgan?

  Who'd you first connect with in Aerosmith sort of emotionally, like of the, of the guys?

• 37:58Speaker 01

  I think Steven because he's basically Bronx Yonkers.

• 38:03Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  So we recognized each other right away.

• 38:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  But, you know, it's basically, it's Steven and Joe.

• 38:12Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Those are the guys. Joe was very standoffish.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Or very shy, either, either one of those.

• 38:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  I mean, he's the, the reluctant rock star. Absolutely.

• 38:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  You know, he, he, he's a very bookish.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  He wanted to be some kind of scientist. He was interested in saving fish in the ocean. He, he, the reason he started playing guitar was so that girls would notice him.

• 38:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  So.

• 38:46Billy Corgan?

  Well, that worked.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:48Billy Corgan?

  But I love it because.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  But I.

• 38:50Billy Corgan?

  You know, go, please.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  But in a room at a high school gig they were doing where they were playing where it was so the acoustics are so terrible, you could hardly hear anything.

• 39:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 39:02Billy Corgan?

  But charisma was there.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  The charisma and the aggression.

• 39:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  And the, and they played Train Kept Rollin'.

• 39:10Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  And, you know, from Blow Up, that was a horse, a big thing for me.

• 39:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. When we, uh, the last day of school in sixth grade, which for me would have been, gosh, what age would I have been? Eleven years old. So that would have been nineteen seventy-eight.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 39:30Billy Corgan?

  They, we had a little, like a little commons area. And so they said, for the last day of school, you can play whatever you want. We have a record player.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 39:38Billy Corgan?

  Bring in your records. You can play whatever you want. Kind of like a last day of school party.

• 39:44Billy Corgan?

  So I played Train Kept Rollin' and, and the teacher made me turn it off.

• 39:50Billy Corgan?

  And I said, but you said I can play whatever I want.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Anything but that.

• 39:53Billy Corgan?

  And he said, wait, you can't play that.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:55Billy Corgan?

  And shut it off. And I did, we did the, in the middle of it, right in the middle of Train Kept Rollin'.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Well.

• 40:02Billy Corgan?

  So, um,

• 40:04Billy Corgan?

  the reason I like, I love this type of stuff is, you know, the legend of Aerosmith, particularly at this point, is a long train. There's a lot of history there, you know, good and bad, mostly good, but the records and the, the breakups and Joe going solo and you did that stuff and all of it, right? But you were at the beginning of that, that particular train, you know, you saw them in that, in that, that infancy, but you saw them before they became this legendary, now the number one selling hard rock band in, in American history. Mostly born up by records that you did.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, the first three.

• 40:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So, um, it's hard from an interview point of view, it's like, what's a point of entry? You know what I mean? And because it's, you know, there's the war stories and the thing. I'm, I'm more interested, right?

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:55Billy Corgan?

  That's what I'm saying. I'm not that interested in that because that's already all out there.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:59Billy Corgan?

  So, did you, did you feel right away, or did it take you a hot second to think, okay, this band's got something that's really, really unique and special? Not just this is another good.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 41:11Billy Corgan?

  What was that for you?

• 41:12Speaker 01

  First of all, it was Steven's voice and, and his very being.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  You know, he's a he's a force.

• 41:20Billy Corgan?

  He is a force of nature.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, he really is. And um, and I knew that he was going to drive that band to make it no matter what.

• 41:29Billy Corgan?

  Well, there's that song, Make It, you know what I mean?

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:31Billy Corgan?

  He literally sings it.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:32Billy Corgan?

  In the song.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:33Billy Corgan?

  And he was.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  We're gonna make it, you know? Dedicated and loyal to the band. He loved them.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  He loved Joe like the kind of love he could never get back from Joe. You know, that would cause problems quite often.

• 41:48Billy Corgan?

  Interesting.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. He could he could never get that kind of love back from Joe. You know, it was sometimes heartbreaking.

• 41:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  I don't mean in a sexual or.

• 42:01Billy Corgan?

  No, I get it. I get it. Every band has its. It's weird chemistry.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:06Billy Corgan?

  And the thing that makes it work is almost the thing that doesn't make it work. It's some it's like a cutting edge in there somewhere. Like an unrequited love.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:16Billy Corgan?

  You know what I mean? Like, in my case, I was talking about recently, like I would write some of these songs that now are big songs and my band would just shrug.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:26Billy Corgan?

  Like they didn't give it at all.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 42:29Billy Corgan?

  It was like it didn't matter what magic trick I did. They were like.

• 42:33Billy Corgan?

  But I think that's part of what drove me in the band.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  I could see that.

• 42:37Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Like trying to impress. I was trying to impress them more than I was trying to impress the world or something. It's interesting.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  That they've become the most important people to impress.

• 42:46Billy Corgan?

  Well, they're the people that are in the room every day.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:48Billy Corgan?

  You know.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  They're your brothers.

• 42:50Billy Corgan?

  Everybody else comes and goes.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 42:52Billy Corgan?

  And in the case of Aerosmith, I mean, the fact that that's still a moving train.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:57Billy Corgan?

  You know, fifty something years.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:59Billy Corgan?

  They just release these new songs with young boy, Joe and Joe and Steven.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not bad either.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  It's not something I would be producing, but that's fine.

• 43:11Billy Corgan?

  So so alluding to my my.

• 43:15Billy Corgan?

  Previous thing, you know, there's so much there. I mean, you and I could just literally talk about Aerosmith for three hours. So we'll keep it simple. But so I just picked like one spot, right? So I was looking at the records and what was on the records and you were obviously in the room. But I thought, okay, I can't remember which it was Get Your Wings, right? It's 1974. And then one side of the record is No More, No More. And then I think the the last track on that side is You See Me Cryin'.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:42Billy Corgan?

  And it's like, so just take those two songs, you know what I mean? Because there's so much to talk about. Like, so No More, No More, it's like, it's basically Guns N' Roses, 15 years before Guns N' Roses.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:52Billy Corgan?

  And You See Me Cryin', and I remember hearing that song when it came out. It was like, what band is this?

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:00Billy Corgan?

  You found this, and basically it presages the ballad version of Aerosmith that was so big in the 90s. Like, you were doing that with them in 1974. Like, you saw that in Stephen's voice.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I, and I knew I wanted to orchestrate it.

• 44:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it's beautiful.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  That way.

• 44:16Billy Corgan?

  Did you do the string?

• 44:18Speaker 01

  No, Mike Monary.

• 44:19Billy Corgan?

  Okay, beautiful, yeah.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I already knew who I was going to, who the orchestra was going to be was primarily near Philharmonic.

• 44:27Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 44:30Billy Corgan?

  See, that's the cinematic thing in you that.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  You know, I sat with Michael and talked through the arrangement with it.

• 44:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  But, but, you know, that scoring for 90 pieces is out of my, my league.

• 44:44Billy Corgan?

  Sure, but I mean, if you were just like a common, you know, growing up in Aerosmith was huge in Chicago. So, you know, you couldn't escape them in Chicago, whether you wanted to or not. And, but that was one of those songs where as a fan, you would listen to the record and it's all this rock stuff. And obviously, a lot of swagger from Stephen and Joe's guitar playing and this and this and that. And then all of a sudden, it's like, wait, what is this band?

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Well, you know, that, that's inspiration from The Beatles.

• 45:14Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Who finish off an album with Ringo singing.

• 45:18Billy Corgan?

  Oh, Good Night.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Good Night.

• 45:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  So that was the inspiration for that.

• 45:21Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know that.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  And, and the other thing was, you know, we're working primarily with vinyl, right?

• 45:29Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  You, so you can't put a loud song on the inside of the record.

• 45:33Billy Corgan?

  Because it starts with a grade, right?

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Right. You can't have a heavy bottom or. So we also

• 45:39Billy Corgan?

  18 minutes or 20 minutes is where it starts to go, right?

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why uh uh there were only nine songs on those Aerosmith records.

• 45:46Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  And you could start out with a bang. You know, we always started out with, you know, toys.

• 45:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Back in the saddle or something that was really bottom heavy and introduce the record.

• 45:57Billy Corgan?

  Now, what about all those weird rumors we always heard that Joe wasn't really playing guitar? Like, what is, what is the?

• 46:02Speaker 01

  But on Get Your Wings, on a couple of tunes, he's not. It's Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter.

• 46:09Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Which was a hard sell.

• 46:12Billy Corgan?

  Was it because of musicianship or was it because of?

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, there weren't, they weren't the players they wanted to be, excuse me, yet. They had in their minds what they wanted to do, you know.

• 46:25Billy Corgan?

  But it must have been hard for Joe.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  Brad was a trained guitarist.

• 46:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Uh, but uh Joe, Joe was a guy who played from the gut, all feel. Uh, and at that time, very little technique, but the greatest feel ever.

• 46:42Billy Corgan?

  It would have feel.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  And, and dangerous. Really, because he didn't care what key went into, and sometimes that was great.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  So, but there were, there were, it needed to, a couple of those songs needed to discipline. That they didn't have at that point. When I approached Steven about it first, he was like, absolutely, I totally get it. You know, I totally get it. You sell it, but I get it.

• 47:11Billy Corgan?

  I would say the same.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll support it. And, and Joe took it really badly. Brad didn't at all. And said, I always wanted to watch those guys work.

• 47:21Billy Corgan?

  Okay. Yeah, but I imagine it would be hard for Joe.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  It was hard for Joe, but it was only a couple of tunes. Uh.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Same old song and dance, Train kept a rolling.

• 47:33Billy Corgan?

  Somebody once told me they thought it was Rick DeRanger playing some of that stuff.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  No, no, just, you know, and I knew Dick and Steve from the Alice albums.

• 47:43Billy Corgan?

  What a great band that was.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:45Billy Corgan?

  What a great band.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  But in the end, it worked out because they learned those solos and went out on the road for a year. He came back when we did Toys. They were like a different.

• 47:57Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Completely different musicians.

• 48:00Billy Corgan?

  The jump in their musicianship.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  And what was, just say one thing about the magic of that band was that

• 48:10Speaker 01

  they, they really acted like a band. They really respected the contributions that each member of the band made. They were totally open to everything, including Steven, except for lyrics.

• 48:22Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Including Steven. Somebody made a suggestion. We played it out before. You know, I never said no to them. I just said, let's see what works best. And that's why the pre-production stages were sometimes months long.

• 48:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Cause they came off the road with no music, no, nothing at all.

• 48:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, probably just a riff.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  That's a riff, yeah.

• 48:47Billy Corgan?

  I want to circle back because this is, we're sort of in your art, 1974, 75.

• 48:53Billy Corgan?

  Were, were you still in orbit of John and Yoko at this point? Cause I read something that you were sort of around for the lost weekend time in LA.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  I was because I did Muscle of Love out there, which John talked me into doing.

• 49:07Billy Corgan?

  Oh, really?

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I said to John, wow.

• 49:11Billy Corgan?

  Did he like Alice Cooper?

• 49:12Speaker 01

  He did. He said, I'm producing Alice Cooper. And he said to me, really? Where are you doing it? And I said, wherever they tell me.

• 49:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Being a novice.

• 49:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  And he said, you're the producer. You tell them where you're going to do it. Of course, Richardson was also producing to keep an eye on me, really.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  And so he said, why don't you bring it out to LA? Warner's will love it. You'd be close to them.

• 49:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  So we did it Sunset Sound and this gave me a chance then to become one of the original Hollywood vampires. Along with Alice.

• 49:51Billy Corgan?

  Were you in the, in Sunset One, the, the original room, the original Sunset Room?

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Yes, the big room.

• 49:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, loved it.

• 49:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I did one song in there once. It was interesting.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, the big knees.

• 50:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I think they finally sold that.

• 50:08Billy Corgan?

  Well, you know, that's the thing with us old studio guys, you know, it all, it all goes eventually.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a studio as well.

• 50:16Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  In LA, so we have a nice.

• 50:17Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, an SSL and all of, all the bells and whistles and uh, five or six hundred thousand dollars worth of mics.

• 50:26Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  Like everything.

• 50:27Billy Corgan?

  What's the name of your studio out there?

• 50:28Speaker 01

  No name.

• 50:30Billy Corgan?

  Oh, no name?

• 50:30Speaker 01

  No, it's not a commercial studio.

• 50:32Billy Corgan?

  Oh, it's just a?

• 50:33Speaker 01

  We let friends uh, use it.

• 50:35Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  And it's a big room.

• 50:37Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  I can score in it.

• 50:39Billy Corgan?

  Oh, wow.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  It's big enough for a small orchestra.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Got everything you could ever imagine, except for the Fairchild we just sold. For a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

• 50:51Billy Corgan?

  You're talking about the Fairchild compressor?

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:54Billy Corgan?

  What made it so expensive other than the normal thirty, forty thousand dollars?

• 50:58Speaker 01

  It was fifty when we bought it.

• 51:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Was it a special one?

• 51:04Speaker 01

  It sounded great, but we had it tuned as well.

• 51:07Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  And it was, and a guy from Dubai was buying.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  He went around LA, made us an offer.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  And my partner and I.

• 51:20Billy Corgan?

  The plugin's looking really good.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  The plugin, you know what? The plugin sounds great.

• 51:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, the plugins are pretty good these days.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  It depends on what you sample, what instrument you sample. So, yeah. So we were like, yeah, I think we bought a rack of uh, 1073s.

• 51:37Billy Corgan?

  Wow. So back to the lost weekend for a second, you know.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  I was the driveway driver.

• 51:44Billy Corgan?

  I was gonna say, yeah, what was your role in this?

• 51:45Speaker 01

  I was that getaway driver in this Cadillac.

• 51:49Billy Corgan?

  So the vampires were, it was Alice, Lennon, Nielsen.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Sometimes Ringo.

• 51:55Billy Corgan?

  Sometimes Ringo. Anybody else?

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, Mickey Dolan's.

• 51:59Billy Corgan?

  Mickey Dolan's, that's right. What a crew.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, really. And, and there were some pretty hairy times.

• 52:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  You have John, getting John out of places where he was getting into trouble when he was drunk.

• 52:12Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  He once kicked the rear windshield out of the car I was driving.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  He could get pretty violent.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  That was some bad times for him.

• 52:26Billy Corgan?

  What was your relationship like with Yoko? I mean, I get the sense that you wouldn't have been in that orbit if she didn't want you around.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Well, I'd made all those Yoko records.

• 52:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that's what I'm asking. I mean.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was John, uh, early in our relationship, said, I'd like you to work with Yoko on her music.

• 52:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  And, um.

• 52:46Billy Corgan?

  I guess, and I'm asking because it's a sense I have just from reading through what I could find about your life is she must have felt

• 52:56Billy Corgan?

  seen and respected by you because your, your presence in their life personally, professionally indicates that.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think when I first started working with her, she tested me. And, um.

• 53:11Billy Corgan?

  And that because I, because you know, I, I also interviewed Elliot Mintz.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:15Billy Corgan?

  You know, so I, I've heard Elliot Mintz's version, especially he wrote a book too, you know, about how she would sort of test him.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, she's test all the time. But the first thing I said to her about something we were doing was, uh, I said, Yoko, I don't care if you play the piano from the bench or inside it. It's going to be unique. So whatever you want to do. I mean, we did some strange things.

• 53:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  But it was all cool.

• 53:42Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  I, you know, I was a big John Cage fan. I was a big, I was a jazz-er.

• 53:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  You know, I loved all of that stuff.

• 53:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So looking back now, uh, I mean, we, we know how this story goes and you were there for different parts of it, but how do you view the relationship? Because I think there's more respect now with time for her. Their partnership maybe is the best way to put it. You know, because back then it was a very contentious thing, her being, you know, she was blamed for breaking up.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's pretty much nonsense.

• 54:15Billy Corgan?

  Sure, but I'm saying is, you know, there's the, there's what the public thinks and the lazy journalism and all that stuff. But then when you're actually in the room, you're in the room with these two people who are both, you know, incredible artists.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:29Billy Corgan?

  Hugely influential.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  He relied on her a great deal.

• 54:31Billy Corgan?

  Sure, that's what I'm saying is you got an inside track where most people didn't on how they actually worked together.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  But I would, at some point, I would stop them from working together. So that they didn't become too critical of each other, particularly. This I learned from working with Yoko early was that if John was producing those sessions. And he came in, it became more difficult for her because if she was singing a little bit flat, he would say something about it. And she would then.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Sing flatter.

• 55:10Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Yeah, so how can you not be?

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so when it came time for her to do her vocals. I would, we would have breakfast in the morning at La Fortuna. Make a plan, then, then I would have her come in at 11 o'clock. We work from 11 to four, sometimes five, and he would come in at five and we would work to whatever time. That just during vocals.

• 55:39Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Which meant that she was free most of the time to do whatever she wanted to do on the vocals.

• 55:46Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  Just take you some direction from me.

• 55:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  And John was very easy to, to work with. The one thing I had learned about working with John, and I had asked him this one time. When we're sitting there and I said to him, you know, what is it, you know, of all the producers you could have worked with?

• 56:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  And I knew half the, I knew half the reason was that they trusted me. But if all the producers you could have worked with.

• 56:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  To do your comeback record here.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Why me? You know? And he just put his, I think, I said, good antenna. Good antenna. And, and that I understood because I knew that when you work with John, you're staying two or three steps ahead of him. At all time, he has no patience.

• 56:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  For anything that's slowing down. If a song isn't going right after two or three takes, we can move on. And he just never problem with that. John, let's move on to the next song. Not a problem. Okay. We'll, we'll get back to it tomorrow.

• 56:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Jeff Emmerich tells this amazing story in his book here, there and everywhere. About John coming in, had a cold, was grumpy. And he did four takes of a day in the life. And then just banged off. And Jeff Emmerich's like. He didn't necessarily like working with Lennon. Because Lennon had no patience.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:09Billy Corgan?

  And where McCartney was willing to do all the meticulous stuff.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:12Billy Corgan?

  And he was more interested in that than the Lennon vibe, which was like, let's just get it done.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:16Billy Corgan?

  Boom. But then he turns around, he says, but he had such immense talent, he could actually pull this off.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:22Billy Corgan?

  In four takes. So there's always this dichotomy of like. Well, why would you do more than four takes when you don't have to?

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Absolutely. If take two was good.

• 57:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Then why?

• 57:32Billy Corgan?

  Is there, is there a moment that stands out in your mind where you're? Like, you see that level of talent? Cause obviously that's a rare level of talent.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  Well, because we did live vocals for everything.

• 57:42Billy Corgan?

  Okay. So give me one where you were like, holy, that this is why it's John Lennon.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Uh, nobody told me.

• 57:48Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  I mean, that vocal is perfect. It's just, he's in there singing and playing at the same time.

• 57:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  It's perfect.

• 57:55Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  He's playing, he's singing. It's what he does.

• 57:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Perfectly.

• 57:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  I mean, that, that just, his talent was enormous. His mic technique was incredible. I mean, and also. He, he drew a line, which was very nice. Between me, producer, and he's the performer. So that.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  He'd go, he'd do four vocals.

• 58:21Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  Maybe five. If I needed a little patching up here and there. And then he'd leave.

• 58:27Billy Corgan?

  And it's you, you figure.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, you figure it out. When you get to call me and I'll, I'll come out of the room and do, and do, and double it.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  And that that's that's all it was. He didn't, you know, Steven would be leaning over you. That S could be better. Do we have another S? How about that T?

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Do you know what I mean? You'd be like micromanaging every inch of it, especially when it got to Pro Tools. But he was, John was like, he knew that they were all good, that they were all relatively good.

• 59:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  And he didn't, he didn't know that we had a record until he heard the vocal back on Watching the Wheels.

• 59:08Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  He was still, he was like, not sure.

• 59:10Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  But when he heard that back, he was like, mother, tell them we have a record.

• 59:15Billy Corgan?

  Right. So now that you're a successful music producer in the, in the fantastic music business, I imagine your, your, did your phone start ringing a lot? I mean, did, were you in demand suddenly?

• 59:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:27Billy Corgan?

  You're making money or?

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:29Billy Corgan?

  I mean.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Money was never a thing, a part of it for me was like, you know, the apartments kept getting better in New York.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  You know, nicer neighborhoods and, and, and, um, but it was like.

• 59:44Billy Corgan?

  Did you feel though, you had your pick though? I mean, you know, are you, were you getting offered enough stuff that you thought, okay, I want to do that and I don't want to do that and?

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:53Billy Corgan?

  Cause you, you made some interesting choices. Montrose?

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:57Billy Corgan?

  It's interesting, right?

• 59:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. I liked, Ronnie was great and he was a, a really interesting man, an astronomer, astronomer.

• 1:00:04Billy Corgan?

  Astronomer?

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Astronomer.

• 1:00:07Billy Corgan?

  It sounds weird when we say it.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. It was an astronomer.

• 1:00:09Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know that.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. He could tell you anything about this.

• 1:00:12Billy Corgan?

  Great guitar player.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Amazing guitar.

• 1:00:14Billy Corgan?

  Cool sound. Is, is this Montrose with Hagar singing or is it?

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  No, with, uh, I can't remember his second guy.

• 1:00:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Uh, Patti Smith, right?

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  That I loved doing that record.

• 1:00:27Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Cool. Rick Derringer, also a really good guitar player, recently passed away. God bless him.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Also, uh, I don't know how many, four, five, eight songs, uh, with Allen Ginsberg.

• 1:00:42Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  That I co-produced with Bob Dylan.

• 1:00:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  That was a trip.

• 1:00:49Billy Corgan?

  We want to talk about somebody with no patience.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, Bob, you know, he, uh,

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  He was truly shy. You know, he used to slip notes to me about what, what we should do next. What do you think we should do next?

• 1:01:04Billy Corgan?

  Did you save the notes?

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  No. Uh, um, then one day he told me a terrible joke.

• 1:01:11Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  Out of nowhere. I mean, just really bad, like, and so I wrote him a note back. I said, you can stick to the notes. And I couldn't have broke the wall.

• 1:01:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  But, uh, yeah, we did. And we had all the beat guys and David Amram and all the whole.

• 1:01:28Billy Corgan?

  I actually knew David Amram a little bit.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, still around. Uh, so that was an interesting record. I mean, I did Sha Na Na. Uh, The Knack.

• 1:01:40Billy Corgan?

  Did you do the first Knack?

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  This round trip, I guess, third.

• 1:01:43Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  Is considered a classic now because.

• 1:01:46Billy Corgan?

  I need to go listen to that because I missed that.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  We did what they always wanted to do. Of course, Capitol Records was.

• 1:01:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Where's my Sharona?

• 1:01:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  How about this instead? Uh, the Rockets.

• 1:01:57Billy Corgan?

  Did you ever meet Sharona?

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  Yes, many times.

• 1:02:00Billy Corgan?

  She was my real estate agent at one point.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, in LA. Yeah. Yeah. Not what you would expect.

• 1:02:06Billy Corgan?

  No, not at all.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  You know, you expect there's some blonde in this. You know, she was great. She's a great girl.

• 1:02:12Billy Corgan?

  Um, bit of philosophical bent. Um, did you find yourself when you were successful, sort of? I, I guess the, the query is something along the lines of like, did you, did you attribute your success to anything particularly, particular in philosophy? Cause as somebody who's produced records, like at some point, you got to kind of pick a lane. You know what I mean? Cause there's, there's the intuitive faculty of producing, which is, I feel this is the right thing.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:42Billy Corgan?

  But then you're also under constant pressure about what other people are doing. You know, there's kinds of.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  I, I never, no, I never felt that at all.

• 1:02:49Billy Corgan?

  So, so if you had a, if you had a recording or, or an aesthetic philosophy, how would you define it? Because.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  It's close.

• 1:02:58Billy Corgan?

  The reason, sorry, the reason I'm asking is because, uh, I know so many of your records and I know them really, really well. And there is a common sort of feeling to your records, but it's almost hard to put my finger on what it is. So that's why I feel I should ask you.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  You know. When I would make a record, the thing that was important to me is that I'm making the record that I want to make with the band. First, the band. And second, not what other people are producing or what the sound is today. Because I want, I would really like 20 years from what I'm producing this record, that this record is still listenable.

• 1:03:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  And that was the kind of feeling.

• 1:03:46Billy Corgan?

  Does that go back to that Al Schmidt, Phil Ramone?

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:48Billy Corgan?

  Like, if it sounds good and it has heart to it, it's gonna work and it'll endure and...

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:54Billy Corgan?

  So that's, is that for you, like, the common thread with your work?

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. That it's still, you can still play the record and not go, who's to the gated river?

• 1:04:05Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so you have to indulge me here because, you know, 1977, 76, 77, I'm in my backyard listening to Cheap Trick Live at Budokan, being from Chicago, which as I am. I mean Cheap Trick was a, they were, they were the local legend.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:04:24Billy Corgan?

  But that was their breakthrough moment, you know. They had their first record come out. But like Budokan was where they suddenly, they were on pop radio. They, on the radio station I grew up listening to, they would play I Want You to Want Me at 10 minutes after the hour, every hour.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:04:39Billy Corgan?

  So I knew if I sat in the backyard at 1:10, 2:10, 3:10, 4:10, I'd hear I Want You to Want Me. Eventually, I figured out if I could record it, I didn't have to sit and listen. But that was a watershed moment for me. Because by having, my father was a musician, like I told you, but he never had success. But the fact that there was a band from Chicago that had success that I actually could identify with, that actually told me it was possible to get out of Chicago as a musician. Because with my father, all you ever heard was you can't be successful out of Chicago.

• 1:05:13Billy Corgan?

  I know it's a lot of information, but there's not really a question.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  I'm trying to think and all I could think of is, you know, Blue Feld and, you know, the blues bands and.

• 1:05:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, and my dad liked those guys and saw those guys too, but Trick was the moment where like it was actually about a younger band.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:31Billy Corgan?

  Making a very midwestern statement, what we now would call power pop.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:36Billy Corgan?

  And Cheap Trick was the ultimate purveyor of power pop.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:39Billy Corgan?

  And Nielsen is crazy genius.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:43Billy Corgan?

  Whatever goes on in that brain.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:45Billy Corgan?

  You know, because you know, being in a room with Rick is like, it's a, it's an endurance test because he's so ADD.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:53Billy Corgan?

  You know, and you're never quite sure if he's in self-promotion or self-deprecation. And Cheap Trick being one of the meanest bands I've ever met in terms of not only dissing each other, but dissing whoever's in the room.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:04Billy Corgan?

  You know, and I know you went through that too.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Not sure.

• 1:06:08Billy Corgan?

  Sure. So give me some Cheap Trick, just, just indulge me because I just love them.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  Oh, well.

• 1:06:15Billy Corgan?

  And I, I actually, I want to tell you a funny story at the end of it, but please go ahead.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  The, the first record that we made was for me, uh, what Cheap Trick was.

• 1:06:25Billy Corgan?

  Hmm.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  The first Cheap Trick album.

• 1:06:27Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that's snotty.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:29Billy Corgan?

  What's that song we wrote about the serial killer?

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  It was the, it was the ballad of Richard Speck before they changed it.

• 1:06:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, they changed the name.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  Ballad of TV.

• 1:06:38Billy Corgan?

  Richard Speck was the guy in Chicago that killed all these nurses.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  Nurses, right.

• 1:06:41Billy Corgan?

  Oh, horrible Grizzly thing.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  He, uh, he was going to sue from the, his jail cell. So CBS without, they didn't want to fight it. So it was the ballad of TV violence.

• 1:06:53Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  But. You know, it, it was snotty and, and dirty and funky and fat. Uh, and dry.

• 1:07:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  And, but also had mandocello.

• 1:07:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  In the middle of it.

• 1:07:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  So that it showed, you know, they this, they could do this too. But I, when I, I got stuck and I'm really stuck on Draw the Line.

• 1:07:24Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  For almost a year.

• 1:07:26Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  And I was supposed to do the next Cheap Trick album.

• 1:07:30Billy Corgan?

  Ah, that's why you didn't do it.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was stuck there.

• 1:07:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  I wanted, um, I, I went to Tom Worm and I said, Tom, listen, I, I can executive produce it. Even while I'm doing this up here in Armagh.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  But I want Rick Deringer to produce it.

• 1:07:49Billy Corgan?

  Oh.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  And he said, I'll take that under advisement, but he loved the band so much. He did it.

• 1:07:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Uh, God bless him. He did a great job, but I thought he turned the band in a different direction that I would have turned them. The only thing I, the first record I knew was gonna land at College because of the statements that were on it was, it was a, you know, a social, it was a social protest record. You know, every, everything on it, Daddy should have stayed in high school.

• 1:08:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  I mean, it was about, you know, taking heroin. It was about a serial killer. It was, you know, all these issues.

• 1:08:30Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  And I thought, well, it'd be great there. It's not gonna, it's a good start.

• 1:08:35Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  And then all those other songs, like I Want You to Want Me, which we recorded, I Love Gogo Girls, Dream Police, we recorded all those. And I said, next record for these guys. Put them on the back burner. We're gonna go slowly.

• 1:08:50Billy Corgan?

  I never knew that.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're gonna go slowly over there.

• 1:08:53Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  But we're gonna make this statement first.

• 1:08:56Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  College will love you. The rest of the world won't, yet. And then, and that's how we'll move. Um, and then, um, and then when I heard I Want You to Want Me with that piano, I was like, uh, no.

• 1:09:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  No. And then when it was a hit from Budokan, which I had mixed, I was like, yeah, see, that's it. You know, that, that's it.

• 1:09:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that's I, cause, cause, you know, there's been a lot of contention through the years about the way those other records were produced. You know, the word that we would throw around back in today was they sounded a little bit wimpy.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:34Billy Corgan?

  Where they don't, they, the band that you see live still to this day and the band that's on Budokan, that band doesn't sound wimpy at all.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  No. No. Funny story about Budokan.

• 1:09:46Billy Corgan?

  Please, yeah.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  So Budokan's not Budokan. You know that.

• 1:09:50Billy Corgan?

  Yes, I know.

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  It's Osaka. It's Osaka, but they sent me the tapes.

• 1:09:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  And Jay and I, we listened to all, you know, we listened to everything. Budokan sounded terrible. It was just so poorly recorded. I don't know, like

• 1:10:07Billy Corgan?

  Really?

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  mics were off or they were pointed the wrong direction or there was a little bit of drums, very little, not much, no bass drum. We went to Osaka, it was better. It was the best performance.

• 1:10:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  I mean, the best recorded, the performance was good.

• 1:10:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  As good as Budokan.

• 1:10:26Billy Corgan?

  They played good every night.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:27Billy Corgan?

  They're one of those crazy.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  And the screams and everything. It was all great. So in order to reproduce the drum sound, what I did was I put a, I put a speaker in a bass drum and I filtered the, whatever I had from the tape down. So only sixty below and below cycles. We're getting through and then I mic'd that bass drum. So now I had a thump.

• 1:10:55Billy Corgan?

  Oh, you basically did like a virtual sound.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:57Billy Corgan?

  It's amazing.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  And I did the same thing with the snare drum.

• 1:11:00Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  There was a one overhead on it. So it was getting a little bit of snare and some toms and some cymbals.

• 1:11:05Billy Corgan?

  I never knew that.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  So I put a, I put a speaker on top of a snare drum and mic'd underneath it. And I think from 5K to 8K or from 3K to 8K and that was

• 1:11:22Billy Corgan?

  It does sound cool.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, then I got a snare drum. So that's how we did that. And

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  It was tough, but here's the funny story. Rick calls me up 20 years ago, something like that. He goes, we have the film from Budokan. We're gonna do a five one. I want you guys to mix a five one version of of it. And I said, you have the film from Budokan? I said, but he goes, yeah, just use like kind of the same mix, maybe. I said, but that mix is Osaka, remember?

• 1:11:56Billy Corgan?

  Did he not know that?

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  No, he'd forgotten.

• 1:11:57Billy Corgan?

  Oh, he forgot.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  He thought he was so excited.

• 1:11:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  So now Jay and I go to work on this thing. And thank God for Pro Tools. There was a cut and paste job. You would not believe because when there was a close up on Rick or his hands or Robin singing, that was Budokan. You know, when I was a wide shot, it was Osaka. And and it was just, it was a labor of love. We loved doing it.

• 1:12:28Billy Corgan?

  And What great songs, though.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:12:32Billy Corgan?

  Great time.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  They're in Japan now, I think. Or they just got back.

• 1:12:36Billy Corgan?

  They're doing their final, because I was just there. All the advertisement is final Budokan final. I just played Budokan the other day. So whenever we're in that building, it's always like, you know, I go back to sitting in the backyard, listening to the mix that you've done from Osaka. Is that that just that sound of that record still to this day? I just being from Chicago, it's that record so much to us in Chicago.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  You used to go back to Chicago at all?

• 1:13:04Billy Corgan?

  I still live there.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  Oh, you do?

• 1:13:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it's that's it's I always say it's the it's the most most indicative side of my insanity that I live in Chicago still. But I've never that I've never gotten out.

• 1:13:19Billy Corgan?

  We don't get political here.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:13:23Billy Corgan?

  Um, okay, just a couple more things. Thanks for indulging me.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  I also worked during that period of like John and the Who and I also worked with with George Harrison.

• 1:13:38Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  On Bangladesh.

• 1:13:40Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:42Billy Corgan?

  I have to say.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  I worked.

• 1:13:44Billy Corgan?

  Your, your, your public record is very incomplete.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I worked with David Bowie on some live record.

• 1:13:51Billy Corgan?

  I had no idea.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  And yeah, you know, I was working with, I worked with Stevie Wonder. I mean, I was working with.

• 1:13:57Billy Corgan?

  You need to get some minion to go out there and fix your public record.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:01Billy Corgan?

  Let's cycle back and, and, and.

• 1:14:07Billy Corgan?

  I know I wanted to tell you a story. Now I can't remember the story. I want to tell you it was a good story. Anyway, doesn't matter.

• 1:14:14Billy Corgan?

  So at some point, John or Yoko, one of them calls and says, John's going to come out of retirement.

• 1:14:22Billy Corgan?

  I want you to hear these demos.

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:25Billy Corgan?

  What was your opinion when John was in his retirement, his house husband sort of retirement?

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  I, I saw him about a year before we did this record. I was at a health food restaurant over on the east side. He had been in the Y with Sean, teaching him to swim. And he came in and he put his hands over my eyes and said, guess who? I guessed, of course, all the wrong people, but I knew where it was at.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:14:51Billy Corgan?

  I love it.

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  And he said to me, what are you up to? He goes, I said, you know, I asked him, what are you up to? And he said, you know, I'm a house husband. I'm not doing anything. I found that hard to believe. And he said, look, why don't you, he says, I miss the whole scene.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  Here's my private number. And I only live like four blocks from him on, on the west side, on Central Park West.

• 1:15:17Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  Here's my phone number.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  Call me up and come up and hang out. And I didn't.

• 1:15:25Billy Corgan?

  Really?

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  I didn't because I thought, you know, all the stuff I'm reading about him and he just wants to be a dad. I'm the last thing he needs me to come up there and.

• 1:15:34Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Now, maybe that was a good thing.

• 1:15:37Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  It might have been a good thing. Um, because now a year later, uh, when the mystic phone call came in to come out to, uh, their mansion out there in Glencoe or wherever that was, it flew me out in a seat plane.

• 1:15:55Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  And, um, and Yoko gave me an envelope that said, uh, for Jack's ears only, it was from John and John then called from Bermuda. And he said, I want you to listen to this and tomorrow, tell me if you think it's just shit or I have a record there. And there were two cassettes and they were wonderful, wonderful. They're all narrated.

• 1:16:23Billy Corgan?

  Um, were these just like him playing into a tape recorder or?

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, he's either playing guitar or some shitty keyboard. Uh, I think, uh, um.

• 1:16:36Billy Corgan?

  He had some kind of keyboard that he.

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just kind of like organ piano sound. Uh, uh, somebody's banging on pots and pans in the background.

• 1:16:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  Then he, he'd, uh, recorded that directly into the mics on a blaster. Then he took that blaster and played it, not wired, it just played it into another blaster. And while he did that, he doubled the vocal. Cause he had to double his vocals.

• 1:17:09Billy Corgan?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  So it was a generation away, you know, uh, uh.

• 1:17:13Billy Corgan?

  But you heard the songs run away and.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  I heard them and they were all narrated. Most of them said, here's another piece. One of them, one or two of them were, uh, this is definitely for Richard Starkey.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  Which I finally gave to Richard Starkey and we recorded it with Paul playing bass a couple of years ago.

• 1:17:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  But I thought, when I spoke to him the next day, and he said, "What do you think?" And I thought, "It was incredibly beautiful, great, great songs." There were just a ton of them. And I said to him, "Why don't you just release these cassettes?"

• 1:17:55Billy Corgan?

  Interesting.

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  "I don't think I could get the magic of what you've captured here. It's incredible. You know, it's just beautiful." And he said, "I suppose that means that you like the record, you like the music." And I said, "I love it." He goes, "Okay, well, we're gonna make a record."

• 1:18:14Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  "It has to be secret."

• 1:18:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  So, no one knew, kinda.

• 1:18:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  Andy Newmark says he knew from the get-go. Because I rehearsed the band without John.

• 1:18:27Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  I charted all the songs.

• 1:18:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. How'd you feel, though, about this kind of, again, this idea of them sharing the record, because that sort of feeds into how it, when it comes out?

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  At first, I thought it was just a John record for a minute, until Yoko handed me this much, these pretty tapes, and she said, "Here's my stuff."

• 1:18:55Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  "Okay, it's gonna be both of you." She said, "Yes, it'll be both of us." So, that's when I knew, that day.

• 1:19:05Billy Corgan?

  I was shocked in doing the research, that the record was, at least what I read, it was poorly received, it didn't...

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  They were like, "Where's the edge? Where's the angry John?" I'm like, "This is him approaching 40 years old." This is, he wants to know how the rest of you are doing. This is how he's doing.

• 1:19:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  He's never sung anything to you, but it's his truth.

• 1:19:34Billy Corgan?

  Always, yeah.

• 1:19:35Speaker 01

  And there he is, singing his truth, and... Where's the edge? Where's I'm the walrus?

• 1:19:42Billy Corgan?

  In the world that we live in now, you would think automatically a number one record. He's back after five years and the whole thing. And it was the complete opposite. I don't remember that at the time.

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  It was, uh, well, because it was mostly ill received in, in the UK. Less so here, starting over was a big hit right out of the box.

• 1:19:59Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  So it wasn't, uh,

• 1:20:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Billy Corgan?

  Was, was part of the criticism Yoko still, or was it more?

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  Oh, that was a tremendous, you know, why do we have to hear Yoko in order to hear John? Well, it's a hard play.

• 1:20:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:14Speaker 01

  It's, it's a dialogue.

• 1:20:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I see.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  And,

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  you know,

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  I didn't understand at all why it would feel that way about it.

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  Definitely understood.

• 1:20:30Billy Corgan?

  This is a, you, this is a maybe a strange question to ask. Because obviously when someone passes away, it puts everything that, that's happened before into a different relief. Did you feel, did you love the record as it was when it came out, irregardless of the?

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I absolutely loved it.

• 1:20:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, because it's gone on to be a classic now.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:53Billy Corgan?

  But it's also imbued with the tragedy that, that follows the coming out.

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  Try to dust that off a little bit.

• 1:20:59Billy Corgan?

  You kind of can.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that's why you ask how you felt when it, when it actually went out.

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  Also, I think that, uh, Walking on Thin Ice is quite brilliant.

• 1:21:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it is cool.

• 1:21:11Billy Corgan?

  So, because we talked about a little bit before we rolled cameras.

• 1:21:18Billy Corgan?

  You alluded to the fact that John being assassinated, and I use that word because Sean uses that word.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Billy Corgan?

  And I remember the first time I heard Sean say that, I kind of, he was, we were talking in private and he said, when my father, when my father was assassinated,

• 1:21:35Billy Corgan?

  not when John Lennon was killed or John Lennon was assassinated, when my father was assassinated, you know, it's one of those things where you kind of,

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:21:42Billy Corgan?

  It hits you like a fish upside the face because you're like, wow, I never thought about it that way.

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:50Billy Corgan?

  That, I think that's accurate, which is why I would say it that way. Right? So when John was assassinated.

• 1:21:59Billy Corgan?

  You alluded to the fact that it kind of sent you off in a different path. Can you talk about that?

• 1:22:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, because suddenly everyone wanted a magazine article. Everyone wanted a book. Everyone wanted this. Everyone wanted that. I wanted, you know, absolutely nothing to do with it.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  And so I started hiding out and then taking pills so that I could just stay in the house, send somebody else.

• 1:22:30Billy Corgan?

  Did you feel, was it a sense of personal trauma? Or did you, you didn't like that you were in this different circumstance? Or was it all of the above?

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  All of the above, yeah. I didn't want to go out of the house.

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  I, it was just, it was terrible. It, and I felt this terrible guilt because very often I went home with him. And I didn't because I had another session after. And so I played it over and over.

• 1:23:05Billy Corgan?

  What could have been different?

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  I would have been in the car. I would have seen the guy. I would have tackled him. John would be alive.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  So that played over and over and over so I could put it away with medicating it.

• 1:23:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  And, and that turned to different drugs. And then it was out of control. And I had to just lay low. After eighty-two or eighty-something, I, I just stopped altogether.

• 1:23:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  Until, until I was sober. I'm sober thirty-one or thirty-two years.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  But I remember them telling me in the program, "Wait, stay sober for two years before you even think about going back to work." And I had really good sobriety because my, my dad had a big old house upstate.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  And it was a chance to, my mom had already passed. It was a chance for me to check in with him, stay with him, kind of take care of him for a while, take care of this big house that they, big old seventeen room farmhouse, contribute to that, my wife and I, our son. And, and there was, it turned out that there was a lot of sobriety in the area. And so it was good. I mean, I went to rehab and then after rehab.

• 1:24:40Speaker 01

  They said, "Okay, stay sober for two years and then think about..." Almost two years to the day, I got a call to produce Supertramp. It was like, hello? Because, you know, I don't know, if you do anything about AA and their, all their mottos, there was, "Wait for the miracle" is one of their things, you know? And it was like, "Oh, miracle." And, and, and then after that I was back to work and it was good.

• 1:25:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:14Speaker 01

  And I felt, I felt good and I put, put, put it behind me.

• 1:25:18Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  But, but never completely.

• 1:25:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Never completely. It comes to me often in a dream.

• 1:25:27Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  John does.

• 1:25:28Billy Corgan?

  Is it a recurring situation or is it always different?

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  It's different. It's different. It could be in different places. It would be the studio.

• 1:25:36Billy Corgan?

  Is it a comfort to you?

• 1:25:37Speaker 01

  It is, yeah. Yeah. And he talks to me. He, he liked to talk to me. He liked to tell me that I didn't know anything.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  He'd say to me, "For a bright guy, Jack, you don't know anything."

• 1:25:55Billy Corgan?

  So two, two last things and

• 1:25:59Billy Corgan?

  because I saw where at some point you had to sue because of unpaid royalties and I'm not, I'm not as interested in that as the fact that at some point there's this peace and you, you still work with the estate and how did, how did that come about that you end up making peace? Cause usually once there's a legal thing, that's kind of the end of the relationship.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, she was being advised by a really bad guy that she was having a relationship with, who told her that you should trust no one. And especially me, who to this guy, I look like I knew everything because I've been around for so long. This is the one guy you, you don't want to trust. Now it's like, you know, number one guy you can trust, you know, no matter what was going on.

• 1:26:51Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:52Speaker 01

  No matter what I saw.

• 1:26:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  So

• 1:26:59Speaker 01

  she went into this at one point during a free trial hearing, I slid over next to her. Security went for me, she said, to her security and I said, "Don't do this. Okay? Don't, don't do it. It, it doesn't make any sense at all. It's a signed contract."

• 1:27:16Billy Corgan?

  Just pay me and let's move on.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's just, yeah, let's just get over it. And still we went to trial, which lasted a week. The jury was out for 10 minutes. They said they got a sandwich and came back.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  But there were some funny moments during the trial of that I could think of.

• 1:27:38Speaker 01

  Apparently she promised,

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  what's his name from Rolling Stone, the owner.

• 1:27:46Billy Corgan?

  Jan Wenner.

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  Jan. She promised Jan that he could have the journal.

• 1:27:51Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:27:53Speaker 01

  If he came in and testified on her behalf.

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  Of course, she didn't have the journal. Nobody had the journal.

• 1:28:00Billy Corgan?

  Because somebody had stolen it.

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Sam Havittoy was the guy, by the way, who was behind all of this.

• 1:28:07Billy Corgan?

  Who actually wrote a weird book. Have you ever seen that book?

• 1:28:10Speaker 01

  No, oh my god, no.

• 1:28:12Billy Corgan?

  He wrote a book where he admits that he stole the journal and he can't

• 1:28:17Billy Corgan?

  put what was in the journal out publicly, but he can put what he remembers about reading in the journal.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  Oh, Jesus. I think he stole the watch, too.

• 1:28:26Billy Corgan?

  It's such a scummy, weird, bottom of the dumpster.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  So, Yohan gets up there and

• 1:28:37Speaker 01

  so her attorney is saying, so who was this Jack Douglas, anyway? And Yohan is saying, he was really a nobody.

• 1:28:47Billy Corgan?

  He only produced.

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was like nobody, kind of an engineer, that's all. I mean, I mean, John liked him and he gave him a job.

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  So, so now my attorney, Peter Parcher, gets up and he's got a book in his hand and it's Yohan's book. And he said, Yohan, would you read this? And it's a chapter in his book where he talks about me being this producer. He makes Yohan read it to the jury.

• 1:29:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  And of course, that was terrible.

• 1:29:17Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:17Speaker 01

  That was a, and then Phil Spector comes in to testify.

• 1:29:21Billy Corgan?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 1:29:22Speaker 01

  Because she promised Phil, I'll give you more stuff to work on.

• 1:29:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:26Speaker 01

  So now Phil, and Phil is totally

• 1:29:29Billy Corgan?

  Sorry to laugh.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  He's totally fucked up. And he gets on the stand and they're asking him questions and he can't make any sense of it, even what they're asking him. So now, no more questions. He gets up and he stumbles. And as he stumbles out of the witness box, his wig goes sideways. So now his sideburns are over his nose. And it was just a pathetic sight. And everybody was like, oh, my god. The funniest one and strangest one of all. Was I would come in, I guess this lasted maybe, maybe two weeks. I would come in and this is the Supreme Court, New York City.

• 1:30:08Billy Corgan?

  Goodness.

• 1:30:09Speaker 01

  It, the, the, uh, the, the room was divided by a aisle in the middle. I was sitting up front. She wouldn't sit up front because of assassination attempts. So she was sitting crowded by her people.

• 1:30:23Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  Everyone that was supporting her was on that side and everyone supporting me was on my side, behind me. And so I would come in and it would be the same people every day, same people. And I would come in and I always, thanks, I thank you for, thanks for coming by. Thank you. I appreciate your support. It's really welcome. Thank you so much. And there was one guy, he was sitting almost directly behind me and I'd say, thank you so much for coming in. And he would just look at me. He wouldn't even say anything, just look at me. And then as I'm sitting up at the, the, the bench, everyone saw I turned around, I could see the guy's, his eyes boring into the back of me. I turned around, he'd be like staring at me.

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  And then one day he was gone, about a week later, he was gone. So now Bob Gruen, because he worked with Yoko, had to sit on Yoko's side. And Bob and I are very good friends. So Bob and I would meet in the men's room. We could talk. And Bob sits me, boy, you got guy up. So I said, what guy? He's going, that witch that Yoko hired to put a spell on you. He was sitting directly behind you. He went up to Yoko and he said, I can't get no, I can't get anywhere with this guy. Every day he comes in, thanks me, smiles, he pats me on the back. He quit.

• 1:31:47Speaker 01

  And I was like, whoa.

• 1:31:48Billy Corgan?

  That's a good story.

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:49Billy Corgan?

  But you made peace. That's the nice.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  We did at a show, uh, um, at, um, one of Sean's shows at Bowery Ballroom.

• 1:31:58Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  I went to see it. She was upstairs. I was sitting downstairs. And somebody came downstairs and, and, uh, said, Yoko would like you to come up to the table. And I came up and, and, um, I went upstairs and she gave me a big hug. And she said, really, is a lot of water has run under the bridge. And then we started working on little things together.

• 1:32:22Billy Corgan?

  I saw that. That's why I was surprised.

• 1:32:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and you know, I get a Christmas card from her where she opened that Moma. She, she sent me an invitation to the opening and, um, and yeah, we stay in touch.

• 1:32:36Billy Corgan?

  That's good.

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  I love her.

• 1:32:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Well, you shared a lot of, lots of stuff together.

• 1:32:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:43Billy Corgan?

  Important stuff.

• 1:32:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:44Billy Corgan?

  Okay, last thing.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:46Billy Corgan?

  Tell me if I'm wrong. I saw you, you teach a class on studio etiquette.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  I, I did at school closed.

• 1:32:52Billy Corgan?

  Okay, okay. Doesn't say much for your teaching, but, but.

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  Well, all those schools.

• 1:32:58Billy Corgan?

  Let's give me, give me one or two parables of studio etiquette. I gotta hear this.

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  The artist is always right.

• 1:33:03Billy Corgan?

  I love this.

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  Uh, listen before you touch anything.

• 1:33:11Billy Corgan?

  I know this feeling.

• 1:33:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, um, I treat everyone that you work with well, no matter who it is.

• 1:33:22Billy Corgan?

  Whoever's on the, on the toe and a pole, all the same.

• 1:33:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and, uh, and stay ahead of everything that's going on.

• 1:33:29Billy Corgan?

  Can I tell you a quick Frank Sinatra story? Cause I love this story.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:33:33Billy Corgan?

  Are you Frank Sinatra fan?

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  I am.

• 1:33:34Billy Corgan?

  Okay. So I work with a guy in New York at a place called Chung King, if you remember.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  Oh, I know it. Downtown.

• 1:33:40Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. And, uh, this was the nineties and he had recently, you know, within recent times worked, had worked with Sinatra towards the end of Sinatra's life.

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:33:49Billy Corgan?

  And I said, what was it like working with Sinatra? And he said, every day, all the boys would come in with, you know, bins of Master Choli.

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:59Billy Corgan?

  And set up the table, full, everything. And then Frank at five or whatever would sit down for dinner and everybody working would sit at the table with Frank. Didn't matter if you were the tape op, the guy sweeping the floor. Everybody sat at the table with Frank and Frank sat there and ate. He ate, they ate the same food Frank was eating. And then Frank sat there for a while and told stories. So that boils up what you're saying.

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:24Billy Corgan?

  If Frank can do it, so can you. So I love that. Thank you.

• 1:34:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, very welcome.

• 1:34:29Billy Corgan?

  Have a good time.

• 1:34:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Great time. Thanks.