Rudy Sarzo Part 1 | The Magnificent Others

Billy Corgan sits down with legendary bassist Rudy Sarzo for Part 1 of a sweeping, emotional journey from Havana to Hollywood, escaping Castro’s Cuba, discovering the Beatles, and finding identity through rock. Sarzo recounts his path from Miami and New Jersey club bands to Chicago glam dreams and, finally, Los Angeles, where Quiet Riot, Randy Rhoads, and a fateful call from Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne led to a whirlwind “Crazy Train” audition that changed his life. Along the way, he shares stories of faith, spiritual awakening, and the belief that rock’s true power lies in its brotherhood and integrity. Subscribe to the Magnificent Others YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@BillyCorganTMO?sub_confirmation=1 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:09Speaker 01

  I said, I want to be in your band. And they say, I say, well, we got too many guitar players. If you want to join, you got to play bass. And I go, what's that? And they say-

• 1:19Billy Corgan?

  Because nobody wants to play bass.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  I could adapt. I became very adaptable. That's one of the things that I learned when I was very young. I must adapt.

• 1:28Billy Corgan?

  It's like, we're gonna make it and nobody wants us.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  A lot of heartbreaks.

• 1:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Oh, painful.

• 1:36Billy Corgan?

  Well, that's rock and roll, right?

• 1:37Speaker 01

  It's rock and roll. What are you gonna do? Kevin LeBroix answers the phone and he says, hey Rudy, is somebody calling you? And I go, nobody knows. Hello? He says, oh, hi Rudy, this is Sharon, Ozzy's manager. Randy tells me about you and we want you to come out to audition. Then Ozzy gets up on stage, we play the songs again. And Ozzy turns to me and says, hey man, do you want the gig? I said, yes. And my life went into Panavision color at that moment. It was like, wow, I'm in this world now.

• 2:17Billy Corgan?

  Boom.

• 2:20Billy Corgan?

  So nice to see you.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Great to see you, Billy.

• 2:22Billy Corgan?

  Thank you for being on my show.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Oh, my pleasure.

• 2:23Billy Corgan?

  All right, here we go.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:26Billy Corgan?

  Rodolfo Maxi- Maxilano.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Maximiliano.

• 2:30Billy Corgan?

  Thank you. Sarzo Lavial.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Grande.

• 2:34Billy Corgan?

  Grande Ruiz.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:36Billy Corgan?

  Hare.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Shimon.

• 2:37Billy Corgan?

  Y Shimon.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, my ancestors.

• 2:41Billy Corgan?

  What a beautiful name.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Well, it's too long for an email, so.

• 2:46Billy Corgan?

  He's like, I'm at.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  So actually, uh, that, that was my birth name, you know, and in Cuba, being a Catholic country.

• 2:57Billy Corgan?

  Is that normal to, to?

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:59Billy Corgan?

  Put all the ancestors.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Get all your ancestors' name and then you, uh, Maximiliano is my saint day. You, you know, there's like.

• 3:07Billy Corgan?

  You know, I'm Saint Patrick, right?

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, so mine was Maximiliano and so.

• 3:12Billy Corgan?

  But what was he known for? Saint Maximiliano.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Was a bass player.

• 3:20Billy Corgan?

  The bass playing saint.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 3:22Billy Corgan?

  Oh, anyway, I cut you off. Okay.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  I love it. So do you want to know the origin?

• 3:29Billy Corgan?

  No, no, I do, I do, yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  How my name got changed? So we moved from Cuba to the United States and in Miami, we became Rudolph.

• 3:36Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  You know, okay, so a couple of years later, from sixty-one to sixty-three, we were relocated to West New York, New Jersey.

• 3:44Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  My first day in school, I, you know, I, we, we are, I, I arrived late in the, uh, in the school year. So they gave me the last seat in the back. And so I'm putting my books away and I hear Rudy, Rudy. I'm like.

• 4:01Billy Corgan?

  Who's Rudy?

• 4:02Speaker 01

  What is that? What's wrong with the teacher? Who's he yelling? Who is he yelling at?

• 4:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  So I, so I look up and he goes, yes, you. And I go, oh, Rudolph. And he says, no, you're Rudy from now on.

• 4:14Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Now, today, that teacher where I got in fire because of.

• 4:18Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Because.

• 4:19Billy Corgan?

  My grog.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, but. Sixty years ago. That was, that was, that was normal, you know?

• 4:27Billy Corgan?

  So this is a partial list, but Quiet Riot, Ozzy Osbourne, Whitesnake, Manic Eden, Dio, Blue Oyster Cole, Jeff Tate's Queensryche, Devil City Angels, and the guess who?

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, Devil City Angels is the band that I it was, it was a situation because there was an album that was recorded. I had nothing to do with it. It was the, the bassist for Cinderella.

• 4:51Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Uh, played on it and, and the other guys in the band, Ricky Rocket and Tracy Guns. I had, I was doing something with Tracy. And, and so he was a member of Angel, what is this?

• 5:08Billy Corgan?

  Angel City?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, Angel City, Sinners, whatever. And, and he says, listen, the, uh, the bass player left. How would you like to do this? And we, I figure, well, it sounds right because when we take a break, what we, what the band that we have with Tracy Guns, then that means that I can just roll into this other band, you know? And I like the guys in the band and everything, but I, I did the video.

• 5:35Billy Corgan?

  So you weren't actually in the band? Okay, so that shouldn't be on the list.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Because as I was doing the video, there was a, an argument between one of the members in the group and management, and management dropped the band. And what, as you know, if management dropped the band in the middle of the project, everything, you know, all the business just goes down.

• 5:57Billy Corgan?

  Very spinal tap.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I spinal, my whole life has been, I'm one of those guys.

• 6:01Billy Corgan?

  We're gonna get to that.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm one of those guys who have lived spinal tap.

• 6:06Billy Corgan?

  We're gonna get to that.

• 6:10Billy Corgan?

  I'm curious, uh, you're born in Havana, nineteen fifty.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:14Billy Corgan?

  And I'm curious for your memories of, of, of being in Cuba as a child before you emigrated, like.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  There were always

• 6:22Billy Corgan?

  Was it a happy time for you?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  It was happy until, I mean, I experienced the turning over into communism.

• 6:29Billy Corgan?

  Was that Batista?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, from Batista.

• 6:33Billy Corgan?

  Batista was fifty-two? And Castro was fifty-eight?

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was there, I was living in, I was two years old, so I don't remember much.

• 6:42Billy Corgan?

  Sure, but if you remember the atmosphere of time.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  I was seven, I was almost nine in the Christmas, I mean, the year's eve of fifty-nine, when the revolution came in. So, you know, I was aware of a lot of things, a lot of changes in my school. It went from like being a normal, uh, private school to all of a sudden, it's run by the government. So now all the teachers were under supervision of whatever.

• 7:14Billy Corgan?

  Did you notice the change, almost like an indoctrination right away?

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Immediately, immediately. As a matter of fact, we missed the first, uh, what would have been my sixth grade. We missed it because my parents took me out of school and waited until we left in nineteen sixty-one.

• 7:31Billy Corgan?

  Were your parents political people?

• 7:33Speaker 01

  No, they were just an average family who did not want their family to live under communism.

• 7:39Billy Corgan?

  Right. Did the average citizen, I mean, if you remember, and I'm sure you've talked about it since, did the average citizen feel that if they did not get in line with the political ideology of the Castro, that they were under threat?

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And, yeah.

• 7:55Billy Corgan?

  Were you conscious of that at the time?

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Yes, I had to because I, overnight, I saw the changes in my school. All of a sudden, we, the children, one by one, were being kept after, after school. And they were basically being interrogated by the teachers, kind of like soft interrogation. There must have been a manual, a playbook, that says, this is how you do it.

• 8:19Billy Corgan?

  Were they trying to get information on the families or the parents?

• 8:21Speaker 01

  How do your family, do you hear your mom and dad talking about Castro, Papa Castro?

• 8:27Billy Corgan?

  That's scary.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I recall, uh, the teacher, you know, saying, okay, children, pray for ice cream to God.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  And of course, you pray you don't get nothing. And say, now pray to Papa Castro. And there you go.

• 8:44Billy Corgan?

  There comes the ice cream.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Hot fudge sundae.

• 8:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, but you, uh, setting aside the political environment, which again, you're still a little kid, you know? I mean, when we're kids, it's like playing in the yard and Yeah. whether you're playing soccer or whatever, like, what's your memory of your life in Cuba?

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Music, uh, you know, one of the things about certain Latin countries, no matter what the political leanings are, music is a major factor. And there was music everywhere.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  You know, I, I was born and I was listening to music before rock and roll existed. You know, so my influences as an early age were big band, Latin jazz, you know, uh, Salia Cruz, Benny Morey, and then, you know, of course, we had the influence of Dizzy Gillespie with, when

• 9:33Billy Corgan?

  Oh, that's right, because he did that whole Latin.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:37Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Oh, there was a lot of, you know.

• 9:38Billy Corgan?

  Afro Cuban, they call it Afro Cuban or?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  The Afro Cuban, but there was a lot of entertainment in Havana, we lived in Havana, like.

• 9:46Billy Corgan?

  Were there a lot of American entertainers coming down to play at the casinos and make money?

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 9:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, Havana was what Vegas is kind of, you know?

• 9:55Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  There, there was, at the time Vegas was really Las Vegas in nineteen sixty-one. It wasn't until the flow in nineteen fifty-nine.

• 10:05Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Of people coming on the ferry, they would take, you used to take ferries from Key West to Havana. So you get off your car and you just drive the car.

• 10:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, because it's only, what is it, ninety miles between Miami?

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, ninety miles, yeah.

• 10:18Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so people took ferries and there you are, you're in Havana.

• 10:22Billy Corgan?

  Was, were, were people in your family musical?

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Yes, uh, I had an, an aunt who was actually a, a, uh,

• 10:32Speaker 01

  a, they had casinos everywhere in Havana. And she was a casino entertainer, lounge singer, she sang on TV and all of that. And then I had an uncle who was classically trained pianist and opera singer.

• 10:50Billy Corgan?

  Did you think that you would one day play music? Was this something you were interested in?

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:55Billy Corgan?

  What's your sort of earliest sort of conscious thought about? I want to be a musician.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Since my uncle played piano and I wanted to play piano. And at that time, liberalizing was very popular in Cuba. And my mom said, uh-uh.

• 11:15Billy Corgan?

  You're gonna be a bassist.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  It's not for you.

• 11:17Billy Corgan?

  This is not for you.

• 11:20Billy Corgan?

  Amazing.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Well, the same thing happened with football. You know, we arrive in Miami and my dad gets, you know, a TV on, you know, like your credit, you know?

• 11:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  We had to have a TV, you know, entertainment. And so I turn on TV and there's football. This is 1961, so it's only very early. This is before the Super Bowl.

• 11:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  You know, I actually watched the first.

• 11:44Billy Corgan?

  U.S. football, yeah.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so my mom sees all these guys wearing tight pants and one guy has his hands underneath the other guy's butt and my mom says, turn that off.

• 11:57Billy Corgan?

  That was that. So, um,

• 12:02Billy Corgan?

  what do you remember about the circumstances of your leaving? I mean, that's a traumatic, for a little child, you know, you're still very young, 10, 11 years old. It's traumatic, I imagine, or am I imagining that?

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, what was the most traumatic? I mean, and at the time, I, we thought this was gonna be, you know, because we left in between the Bay of Pigs, we were in Cuban Bay of Pigs, and the missile crisis. You know, the October missile crisis. So we were right in the middle. And

• 12:35Speaker 01

  they have installed committee, defense committees, the Comité de Defensas, in every block. So there was basically neighborhood watch.

• 12:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  They were just like looking, making sure, writing notes, or doing something that looks a little bit weird, like moving furniture out of your place when you're not moving and, hmm. And my dad was a technician. He ran, um, back in the, you know, in the 50s and 60s, he had these huge three bobbin newspaper printing.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  He ran that.

• 13:11Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  You know, he was the technician.

• 13:12Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  You know, for the magazine called La Buena.

• 13:16Billy Corgan?

  And they had those massive printing.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Massive, yeah. And this is something that you cannot just like push a button. You you had to know how to operate it, you know.

• 13:23Billy Corgan?

  And it's dangerous, too.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Oh, it is very dangerous, yeah. And so they were keeping technicians. They were not allowing them to leave the country. So my, you know, we we spent about a year and a half getting all all the documentation necessary, not only to leave the country, but to enter the United States. Which was, um, we had to get a sponsor. We had to get the visa. Uh, and then, of course, the the the tickets, the passport, everything, you know, on on the cover. Like, nobody knew. Nobody in the family knew that that we were leaving.

• 13:58Billy Corgan?

  Because if they knew.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  They would have kept my dad, and my mom was not willing to leave without my dad.

• 14:04Billy Corgan?

  So, just so I understand, so there wasn't a legal process to leave. You've almost got to do it all on the sly.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  No, no, we we did it legally.

• 14:12Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so I'm just confused by that.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, well, because. No, no, we we we just, it was a matter of like, nobody else knew that we were doing it in the family.

• 14:22Billy Corgan?

  Because the the family might rebel or?

• 14:24Speaker 01

  No, they might, something might slip out. Somebody might mention something to somebody else.

• 14:29Billy Corgan?

  Okay, now I understand.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  You know.

• 14:31Billy Corgan?

  I get you, yeah. The risk is somebody might make sure you don't leave.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Well, not intentionally, just by oops.

• 14:39Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I see.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  You said something, you know, and or we did not give anybody furniture or clothing. We left the apartment in Havana, just like we're going out for the weekend.

• 14:50Billy Corgan?

  Okay. When you guys did leave, did you did you think it was possibly temporary and that the political situation would change and you could come home?

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Yes, as long as Kennedy was alive.

• 14:59Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  That was the moment when Kennedy got shot. By then, we had we had been relocated to New Jersey, which New York.

• 15:06Billy Corgan?

  And you knew that was it?

• 15:09Speaker 01

  The ship got burnt.

• 15:11Billy Corgan?

  Have you ever been back?

• 15:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 15:13Billy Corgan?

  Do you ever want to go back?

• 15:15Speaker 01

  I don't want to go back as a tourist. I want to go back as a citizen. See, my citizenship was stripped.

• 15:20Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Once we left. We became gusanos, worms. That was the nickname for people that left.

• 15:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, there was a situation in the late nineties where.

• 15:34Billy Corgan?

  There was kind of a loophole where you could go to Cuba as an American citizen, but you had to do it kind of on the sly. You had to go fly somewhere else and then you could go to Cuba.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:44Billy Corgan?

  And there was a group of kind of famous people going. And I was sort of offered to go with them. And, uh, and my, my girlfriend at the time wanted to go because, you know, Havana is such a, you know, beautiful place in terms of culture and, you know, they still have the 1950s cars, you know, you know, of course, it's the romantic idea of something.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Yes, the romantic.

• 16:07Billy Corgan?

  It's a tourist thing, you know?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:08Billy Corgan?

  I understand. I'm, I'm saying this. This is, this is what I was being sort of sold. And I was curious, but, and eventually I said, I don't want to go. And the people that wanted me to go said, why don't you want to go? And I said, I don't want to sneak. I don't want to go there on the sneak.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:25Billy Corgan?

  I want it to be a peaceful, when it's a peaceful thing.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:30Billy Corgan?

  You know?

• 16:31Speaker 01

  You know?

• 16:32Billy Corgan?

  That's the same.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:34Billy Corgan?

  Well, I hope you, I hope you do get to go.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  If it's meant to, I mean, I know that I, even if I go, it's not going to be even close to the place my family left in 1961.

• 16:46Billy Corgan?

  Sure, of course not. You probably would be almost unrecognizable.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Unrecognizable.

• 16:51Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, but still, home is home, right? Do you feel that way?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Well.

• 16:55Billy Corgan?

  I know you love America, so that's.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  I, I, I am an American that was born in Cuba. Yeah. Uh, what would be recognizable is the breeze, the, the environment,

• 17:06Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  the nature of it.

• 17:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  You know, because there's a certain scent to it.

• 17:12Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:14Billy Corgan?

  I get that. It's beautiful. Um,

• 17:18Billy Corgan?

  okay, now you're in America.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:20Billy Corgan?

  Interesting time, right? Early 60s and, and like you said, you end up going up north to New York or New Jersey.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, where's New York?

• 17:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:31Billy Corgan?

  Did you like America right away? I mean, what was your?

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. My first impression, first day in school. Well, listen, now there's prayer in school and there's the pleasure of Elysians. I felt safe.

• 17:42Billy Corgan?

  Hmm. Okay. Yeah.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Safe from, I mean, remember, this is the Cold War times.

• 17:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. I mean, this is a little bit of proselytizing, but I think sometimes we as Americans, born in America, Americans, we lose sight of how great America can be and is. And sometimes we need someone who comes to America and, and tries to almost back explain to us, don't you understand what makes your country so amazing? You know, and the fact that your family found security and prosperity, right?

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Well, it's, to me, it's all based on, and I'm not a political person, but having been affected by communism, I, I, I am a political person.

• 18:29Billy Corgan?

  Well, how can you not be?

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I can't help it.

• 18:31Billy Corgan?

  Like, you know, in America, we deal with communism and socialism. In many ways, this is a sort of a conceptual idea. You know what I mean? It's, it's all like a school thing. Yes, there are practical applications and we're conscious of where it's applied in other places. But even part of the argument that goes on sometimes in America is like, well, you know, communism has never been applied properly or, you know, you hear these kind of collegiate explanations. But when you talk to people who actually grew up under communism, and I was in a relationship with somebody who grew up under Soviet communism. They're like, you don't want that.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  No, no, because one thing is to read about it, you know, to romanticize it. And another thing is to like, be in it.

• 19:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 19:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. And sorry to interrupt you. What was funny was when you were talking about how the kids were being interrogated at school.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:22Billy Corgan?

  The person I was in a relationship with told me a story once, and this is Soviet era, you know, early eighties.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  The playbook. Yeah.

• 19:29Billy Corgan?

  The, the, the person told me that, that one day the parents kind of said, come here, you know, and, and told her.

• 19:40Billy Corgan?

  When we argue, you have to keep your voice down.

• 19:45Billy Corgan?

  And you can't say anything about bad about us or the neighbors or the government. Like, you gotta really, and she was a kid. So imagine telling a little kid, like, you gotta watch what you say because we might all get hauled out of here. I think that's the part that where you get a little bit lost in the conceptual applications of these things.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Yes. And unless you, you know, unless somebody has lived through that, it's very hard to understand.

• 20:14Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so, so, uh,

• 20:17Billy Corgan?

  because I was trying to follow your biography. So, so, did you guys stay in New York or?

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Was New York, well, you know, coming from a, from the Caribbean, surviving the winters was pretty harsh from, for my family. You know, me as a kid, I could adapt. I became very adaptable. That's one of the things that I learned when I was very young. I must adapt. You know, I adapted to the American culture. I adapted to the language. I'm still learning the language.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  I'm like a computer, you know, Microsoft, you're a DOS and then you got the Windows on top. Sometimes I think in Spanish.

• 20:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I can imagine, yeah.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's weird. But after all these years, you know, but that's my programming. That's the way I was programmed.

• 21:06Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  You know, it all begins when you're, when you're a child. You get programming from your parents, you get programming from your school and then from TV.

• 21:14Billy Corgan?

  But were, were your teenage years, though, in, in, in the New York area? The reason I'm asking is because if you remember,

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:21Billy Corgan?

  radio back then was very regional.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:24Billy Corgan?

  So the music you would have heard in the 1960s

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:28Billy Corgan?

  in New York, a lot of doo-wop. You know what I mean?

• 21:33Speaker 01

  I got there in sixty three.

• 21:35Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Right before the storm happened.

• 21:37Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  You know.

• 21:39Billy Corgan?

  But it was still kind of doo-oppie and.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  It sure was. I mean, it was black and white.

• 21:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  My life was black and white.

• 21:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  You know, it went from a kind of like a sepia in Havana to black and white. And then nineteen sixty four, February nine.

• 21:58Billy Corgan?

  Beatles or yeah.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Living Color.

• 22:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Everything changed.

• 22:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Especially culturally, because you know, when my family moved to West New York, there were not enough Cubans there. They had some Puerto Ricans. Most of the Puerto Ricans were in the Bronx. You know, so it was mainly Irish and Italian and. Uh, they, you know, they had the little neighborhoods and blocks. And the same thing in school. They hung out with each other.

• 22:24Billy Corgan?

  Oh, sure.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  And so I was kind of like.

• 22:26Billy Corgan?

  So what, what group did you hang out with?

• 22:27Speaker 01

  No, no group. My, my little brother.

• 22:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  My brother and me, that's it. And then overnight, uh, after the Beatles' appearance, you know, Will went from having pompadours like Frankie Valli to like calming it down. And now I was like, I, we were identified by, we had an identity.

• 22:48Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  A collective consciousness now. And that's when everything broke down, that wall.

• 22:53Billy Corgan?

  Because of Rock and Roll.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:54Billy Corgan?

  Oh, that's beautiful.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:56Billy Corgan?

  I never heard it put that way.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  It was really beautiful.

• 22:59Billy Corgan?

  Well, in a way, I mean, that's been your whole life is this, this how rock brings together from people from such different backgrounds in common, in common voice.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:09Billy Corgan?

  And, and, and sorry, but that's also, I think, that people who don't like hard rock music and heavy metal don't really understand is that's one of the great strengths of that, that, that, that, those musical idioms is the, is the fraternity.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:23Billy Corgan?

  That gets born amongst the fans.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  I, I, I like to think of it as, as a collective consciousness.

• 23:28Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, we all gather, I mean, if you're. You know, for me, being on stage and you have your own perception of you being on stage with what you do and what I do. People ask me, how did it feel to play in La Villa? You know, which you and I would play together. And I'm going, well, when I was a little kid, my parents used to take me to the beach. I was two years old, put me in a blanket and I would spend hours looking at the ocean. And the first time that I played in a stadium with Ozzy, as soon as I went on stage, I went, ah, it's the beach.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  This is great. It's an ocean of souls out there. It became the same thing.

• 24:19Billy Corgan?

  Very spiritual here.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so every time I play in a large venue, it brings that memory back.

• 24:25Billy Corgan?

  That's beautiful.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  It's very, very comforting.

• 24:29Billy Corgan?

  So what were you seeing on television or hearing on the radio or hearing on the street? What, beyond the obvious things like The Beatles, what really touched you personally?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. That was as close to rock and roll as we got.

• 24:45Billy Corgan?

  What a great artist Frankie is. I mean, such cool music. Again, that New York-y doo-wop-y thing, right?

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:54Billy Corgan?

  But they had such a unique take on it.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Very unique. As a matter of fact, a couple of days ago, I just watched the Jersey Boys for the first time, you know? And I, because you know, there's been videos on YouTube about Frankie Valli standing up on stage and lip syncing and looking like he doesn't even know where he's at. Or, and after watching his story, I get it. I get it. This is a man who, as soon as he had his first break, this is all he knew.

• 25:25Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Getting up and this, for him to be on stage is to be alive, basically.

• 25:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:34Billy Corgan?

  But who, who, okay, so Frankie Valli, anybody else from that, from that group?

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Well, you know, we had the, maybe early Beach Boys, but they were, it was, it was like rock radio was born out of the Beatles.

• 25:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Because it wasn't, it was the British Invasion.

• 25:52Billy Corgan?

  So were you a British Invasion fan?

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yes, they opened the doors and then Ed Sullivan, every week, so bringing the Stones or the Kinks or, you know, the Animals.

• 26:00Billy Corgan?

  But you know, like back in the day, like some people were Stones fans versus Beatles. Like where'd you?

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Oh, I was Beatles all the way because it brought me into.

• 26:10Billy Corgan?

  Ah, I see. To you, they were, they were the gateway for.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:15Billy Corgan?

  Everything that followed.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, it did, it, it just, it finally gave me an identity that I was looking for.

• 26:22Billy Corgan?

  Can you explain that a little bit more?

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Sorry?

• 26:24Billy Corgan?

  Explain that a little bit more, like when you say identity, like how does that give you the identity or in identity?

• 26:29Speaker 01

  I, I stopped being invisible.

• 26:32Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  I, as a Cuban kid in West New York with not a whole lot of Latinos, I was the invisible kid in the, in the classroom until one day, Christmas Day, I was, I was very fat when I was little because I grew up on the, on government cheese, you know, my parents being Cuban refugees.

• 26:54Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  You know, we were given these.

• 26:56Billy Corgan?

  I can't imagine you fat, I'm sorry.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Nothing would get you fat quicker than.

• 27:02Billy Corgan?

  Government cheese.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Government cheese and, you know, we were given army rations and actual like little, like metallic.

• 27:09Billy Corgan?

  My dad used to get those sometimes for some reason because I remember what they look like.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, you remember, so you know.

• 27:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I don't know why we got those.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like plain wrapped.

• 27:17Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  You know.

• 27:17Billy Corgan?

  But I remember the box and.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Yes, a box, to me, it's like going to Costco, it's the same thing, they give me a box and I put all my stuff in there and it's so it was the government cheese, powdered eggs, powdered milk, peanut butter and a couple of other things that, army ration, so I blew up, oh, Spam, they used to call it refugee meat, kind of the refugio, Spam, you know, smells so bad.

• 27:41Billy Corgan?

  Oh, my God.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my mom would take the powdered eggs and the Spam and make all these. Birdfry G.

• 27:49Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  And I, I, I, I got really, really heavy. I was about a, about a hundred and ninety pounds when I was like fifteen, sixteen. And, and so they were looking for somebody to wear the Santa Claus suit. And one of the teachers says, well, we got one in my classroom. So they brought it.

• 28:10Billy Corgan?

  Oh, my God.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  And they took me to another room. They took me to another room and said, here, wear this and go from room to room.

• 28:17Billy Corgan?

  Did you know it was because they thought you were fat?

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:19Billy Corgan?

  Did it bother you?

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Because as soon as they, they said, oh, he doesn't need a pillow.

• 28:24Billy Corgan?

  Oh, my God. Did that bother you, though?

• 28:26Speaker 01

  I knew I was fat. It, it was not in denial about that. And I tried so hard to lose the weight. My parents took me. This is, you know, again, sixties, New York, something out of like Midnight Cowboy, you know, that you get that feel, the streets, you know, the look of the people.

• 28:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  And all of that, right? So we're in New York and my parents take me to this building and we go up this elevator and there's a, a line of people getting, it's like diet. It was like a diet doctor, like a

• 29:01Billy Corgan?

  Were they getting like shots?

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Doctor feel good, doctor.

• 29:03Billy Corgan?

  But was like shots of amphetamine or something?

• 29:06Speaker 01

  But I didn't know what they were getting me. So there will be like a, like a assembly line.

• 29:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  And I went in there and they took my pulse and then they gave me shots and they gave me these pills at the end of the line and went home and take, take one of these in the morning, take one of this in the afternoon, and one of these at night. And I was in constant

• 29:27Speaker 01

  at school, at the gym class, like, what is going on?

• 29:34Speaker 01

  You know?

• 29:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  So that didn't work. And it wasn't until my family moved back to Miami, like in nineteen sixty seven, that in my last year of high school, that I lost about sixty pounds.

• 29:46Billy Corgan?

  So when's the bass show up in all this?

• 29:47Speaker 01

  The bass. Okay. So when we went back to Miami, I, my, my parents went in Christmas sixty three, just after Kennedy got shot, just to, to, you know, to cheer up my brother and me, they bought us a Spiegel catalog.

• 30:05Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Acoustic guitar.

• 30:07Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, it's like zebra striped.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Yellowish. And so, so my brother shared that. See, for, for, while, while we were kids, we shared everything. Because they could not afford two.

• 30:22Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  They could barely afford one.

• 30:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  But two, okay. And so we shared the same guitar. And, and so I took that guitar, that guitar was with me for a long, long time. Uh, and so I went down to, we're back in Miami, I go down to, e- each block had a band. You cannot join the band across the street, you have to stick with your block.

• 30:46Billy Corgan?

  Okay, neighborhood band.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  And so we go there and it's in a garage. And nobody has amplifiers, it's just like a drummer had a, a phone book. Phone books were thick like that.

• 30:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  You know, and he had some real drumsticks.

• 31:02Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  That was his, he had a box and a, and a phone book, that snare and kick.

• 31:07Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  That was the drummer. And then a bunch of guys with acoustic guitars and I go, hi. Introduce myself and I said, I, I wanna be in your band. And they say, I say, well, we got too many guitar players. If you wanna join, you gotta play bass. And I go, what's that? And they say.

• 31:24Billy Corgan?

  Cause nobody wants to play bass.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  What is the bass? He says, it's like playing a solo during the whole song. And I went, just.

• 31:32Billy Corgan?

  And you're still soloing.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  I'm still soloing. So, so my parents, I, I begged my parents to go to Sears, and again, they don't credit. Uh, Silvertone amp with, I picked the one that had the most input, so everybody could plug in their,

• 31:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  their instruments.

• 31:48Billy Corgan?

  I know, I know the, I know the amp you're talking about.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Job security. You're, you, you, you're the guy with the amplifier that everybody needs to plug into, you know? So, that one.

• 31:56Billy Corgan?

  And sing into. You know, also it has to be some guy wanna sing through the amp too.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Well, you know, we, we, we have various singers and most of them bought their own tape recorder. And they use, somehow they use the speaker from the tape recorder.

• 32:09Billy Corgan?

  But, okay, so what was your first bass?

• 32:13Speaker 01

  It was Zimgar.

• 32:15Billy Corgan?

  Zimgar?

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Zimgar, I know. And then my second one was a Kingston.

• 32:19Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  And then my third was a Gibson EB, because of Jack Bruce.

• 32:25Billy Corgan?

  Slow down, we're getting a headache. I like you with the Sears guitar, yeah.

• 32:34Billy Corgan?

  So how do you pick up and go to LA? I'm, I still don't understand that.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 32:40Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Well, actually, um, so.

• 32:44Billy Corgan?

  I know I jump, I know I jump ahead a bit, but it gets to all the good stuff.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  That's fine, because everything else kind of like builds up to that question that you're gonna ask me. LA, okay, so we're in Florida. My brother and me, we have, you know, we're playing club bands and then disco comes in. This is early seventies. And it got to the point that you have to start wearing matching outfits.

• 33:07Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  And there's this playlist. These are the songs you're gonna play if you wanna work.

• 33:11Billy Corgan?

  And the club, the club would give you the playlist?

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. They hire some guy who, okay, the circuit was this is in South Florida.

• 33:21Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Playing Big Daddy's Lounge.

• 33:24Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Okay. So, so if, yeah, which you actually would, you know, if this is what you really wanted to do it with your life, it was great because it was like Big Daddy's in every city and you go and spend a week here and spend a week there.

• 33:38Billy Corgan?

  Ah, so it's like a circuit.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  It's a circuit completely, but I wanted to be a recording artist.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  And, you know, playing bands like Led Zeppelin.

• 33:46Billy Corgan?

  Hmm.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  And all my Cuban musicians says, you're out of your mind. It's not gonna happen.

• 33:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  But I said, well.

• 33:55Billy Corgan?

  Did they say that because they, because of you being Cuban? Or they just thought it was just an impossible dream?

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, yeah.

• 34:01Billy Corgan?

  It's because in their mind, they're, because they weren't seeing people like you on television or in the music culture.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:09Billy Corgan?

  I mean, come on.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  The only guy in television that was Cuban was Ricky Ricardo. That's, that's about it. You know, Cuban Pete.

• 34:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 34:18Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  This is it.

• 34:19Billy Corgan?

  So, so.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  So we leave, my brother and me, we went up in Utica, New York. And the band that we had this band that, so my brother and our keyboard player who, who was my brother's girlfriend, Suzie, they, they get married and they settle in Paramus. Actually, they got, yeah, in Paramus. And then I said, well, you're married now, so it's time for me to to move on.

• 34:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Because I was a dead weight, but right there.

• 34:49Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  It was like you guys, you know, you start your family and I'm gonna keep pursuing this. And so I grabbed my SVT, one guitar and one suitcase, put it on a train from Newark to Chicago.

• 35:03Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  And I got off the train. Some people were meeting me there and we started putting out, we put a band together that actually moved from the Chicago area.

• 35:15Billy Corgan?

  Did you play in Chicago?

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I played everywhere.

• 35:17Billy Corgan?

  What year would it have been?

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Seventy five.

• 35:20Billy Corgan?

  Okay, now it's funny because my father was playing Chicago at this time.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  What band?

• 35:24Billy Corgan?

  Well, he had a band at one point around that time. It was called Crystal.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Crystal.

• 35:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Really good band, African American singer. It was really talented. My dad's best friend.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Around that time, Shaka Khan was singing.

• 35:36Billy Corgan?

  But my dad used to play with the musicians in Shaka Khan, so he was in that circle.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:41Billy Corgan?

  So isn't it funny, on some possible timeline, you and my father would have crossed paths?

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Wow. Yeah, we probably did. I mean, we were playing.

• 35:50Billy Corgan?

  Because you know, back then there weren't that many bands.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  No. Do you know Mickey Free?

• 35:54Billy Corgan?

  Don't know that name.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, he had a band called Smokehouse at the time. You know, this is at the time where The Thumbs, Cheap Trick had just gotten signed.

• 36:01Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  So it was that that power pop sound.

• 36:06Billy Corgan?

  When that was first first coming in, yeah.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, so.

• 36:09Billy Corgan?

  Did you like that type of music? Was that, I mean, what what are you thinking musically at this moment?

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Glam rock at the time.

• 36:14Billy Corgan?

  You want to be glam rock?

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Glam rock, yeah, that was my.

• 36:17Billy Corgan?

  So who who who in glam rock are you trying to?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Bowie.

• 36:19Billy Corgan?

  Bowie, yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  That was it. Yeah, Bowie and then everything that came out, come out when we tap.

• 36:24Billy Corgan?

  But you know, Bowie had great bassists, you know.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Yes, they did.

• 36:27Billy Corgan?

  This is, are you saying about Herbie Flowers, Bowie?

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Herbie Flowers and and what's his name about? Spider from Mars bass.

• 36:35Billy Corgan?

  Uh, is it Woody?

• 36:36Speaker 01

  Trevor Boulder.

• 36:36Billy Corgan?

  Trevor Boulder, yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  I met Trevor.

• 36:38Billy Corgan?

  Uh, oh.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  And we, I, I love.

• 36:40Billy Corgan?

  What a great bass player.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  That's how I got the, the Quiet Riot gig because they were looking for a bass player that could play like Trevor with his fingers.

• 36:48Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Because everybody else in LA was using picks to play. And now Trevor's is, Trevor Boulder has been an incredible influence on me.

• 36:56Billy Corgan?

  Oh, that's fantastic. Cause I didn't know that about you.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 36:59Billy Corgan?

  Okay, but how do we get to LA?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Oh, got to LA, okay. So you know, we.

• 37:04Billy Corgan?

  We're gonna get there eventually.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Eventually. We had a manager, uh, that was getting us gigs, you know, but a- again, you know, all the money was funneled through him and, and one day they, they came in and repossessed the U-Haul truck that we were using to move our equipment with.

• 37:22Billy Corgan?

  Back to Spinal Tap.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Frankie Benelli was, was in the band at the time.

• 37:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  With all of his vintage percussion gear.

• 37:29Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  And that, that was heartbreaking. You know, so we said, we, we have to get out of here. I mean, we're playing everywhere. We're playing Mothers, we're playing Rush Up, Rush West.

• 37:39Billy Corgan?

  Uh, my dad used to play Mothers all the time.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, Hueys.

• 37:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I mean, we're playing the whole circuit. And so we said, you know what? We have to get out of here.

• 37:48Billy Corgan?

  What's so beautiful, sorry, but what's so beautiful is I know, I know exactly the world that you were inhabiting in 1975 because I was there. You know, I would go on and sound checks during the day in those clubs with my father. So I know exactly what that smelt like, felt like.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:03Billy Corgan?

  But the people like what they dress like.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Did you envision doing what you got to do with Smashing Pumpkin at that time?

• 38:11Billy Corgan?

  No, no. No, my father didn't want me to play music. He was totally against it.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  I mean, being in, in the same scene as he was, I, I can see why.

• 38:23Billy Corgan?

  Okay. See, that's nice that you're saying that because that's what he always would say is like, it's not the life for you.

• 38:30Billy Corgan?

  Because he had such a hard time with that scene.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, see, for me, being a starving musician was a step up from being a Cuban refugee.

• 38:40Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I get that. At least your destiny is in your own hand, right? There's a feeling to that.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So no matter how bad it got, and it got pretty bad right before I had my my epiphany.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  You know, basically, you know, people come to me for advice, you know, how do I do this? How do that? And my advice is be prepared, show up prepared and let God take over.

• 39:08Billy Corgan?

  What's the epiphany? Tell me the epiphany. It's probably in this book.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  It is in the book. It's early on.

• 39:14Billy Corgan?

  Which you just gave me a copy of. Thank you so much. Off the rails?

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, off the rails. It's not a plug.

• 39:21Billy Corgan?

  I like plugging things. No, I love to. I love to. As beautiful these interviews are, I mean, nothing replaces a book because it's in your own voice and your own pace, right? So.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. My only advice is that when I wrote it, you know, I stood, I sat in front of a computer like you got the first page. It's blank. And I'm going, okay, how am I going to do this? Hugh Grant showed up and narrated the whole book to me.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  It did. It did. It was amazing. So if you, when you're.

• 39:56Billy Corgan?

  So read it in the voice of Hugh Grant, but with a Cuban accent.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  A little bit more like, you know, Tony Montana means if Hugh Grant would have done Tony, it was close.

• 40:09Billy Corgan?

  Okay, all right. Last time, let's get to LA.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  We're almost there. That's a long way. So anyway, so we were in, so three of us, you know, we burnt out the whole scene in Chicago and say, you know, we got to get out of here. And.

• 40:24Billy Corgan?

  Good decision, by the way.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  It was, yes, yes, it was. It was, but it was the only decision we had. It was like, no other choice. We got to go. We got to get a record deal. We got to put a band together and so on. And, you know, the people who have like mind, you know, mind about direction that we wanted to. So it was Frankie Benelli and, you know, Bob Marlet.

• 40:46Billy Corgan?

  Of course.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  That was our keyboard player.

• 40:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. We, we, we, we drove from Lincoln, Nebraska, which is where Bob's family is from. In his dad's station wagon with a small U hole. Cause you have to carry his V three, of course. Back in the day.

• 41:06Billy Corgan?

  Lifting those things up and downstairs couldn't have been fun.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Oh, uh, rush up. Oh, yeah. With a Leslie, of course, you know.

• 41:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  So we venture over to in nineteen seventy seven. To LA. And we got there.

• 41:21Billy Corgan?

  So we're in LA now.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  We're in LA. And there was a circuit of ladies. That would welcome. Musicians from out of town. And they kind of like you spend a week here. Then you spend a week over there.

• 41:35Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Is this groupies or friends of the band? Or a bit of both?

• 41:40Speaker 01

  You know, groupies has such a sour connotation. You know, if it wasn't for these ladies. Most of us would have never made it, you know?

• 41:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were kind souls, you know?

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, you know?

• 42:01Billy Corgan?

  Kind souls.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank God for that.

• 42:03Billy Corgan?

  An association of kind souls.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think.

• 42:05Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I get it. I get it.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  They were, yeah. Yeah, so here I am and and we ran out of money. In seventy seven.

• 42:13Billy Corgan?

  Of course, as you do.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, Bob went in his own way and Frankie went in his own way and I went back to New Jersey. Got some money together with my brother playing in a lounge club. Uh, clubs in the whole New Jersey circuit. Uh, uh, Howard Johnson's.

• 42:31Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  A lot of Howard Johnson's.

• 42:32Billy Corgan?

  But the idea is you're gonna come back once you get some money.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  I was gonna get money together and I did. And I got my ticket and I, two days before I was going to fly back to LA, I got a phone call from Kevin DeBro. And he says, hey, man, we're looking for a bass player and. Everybody tells me that you're the guy because, you know, they were looking for a guy who played with the fingers like Trevor. And, uh. So I said, hey, I'm gonna be there in a couple of days. I'll give you a call.

• 42:56Billy Corgan?

  And you've seen them play before.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Yes, I did. But that's a different question.

• 43:03Billy Corgan?

  Well, I'm saying you had some connection to the to the group.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Very, a very small connection.

• 43:08Billy Corgan?

  Sure, but but it's funny how those things work.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Well.

• 43:12Billy Corgan?

  Do you like, for example, you like Al Green?

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:15Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:16Billy Corgan?

  So, Willie Mitchell, who produced Al Green and was the drummer, was playing a gig in Memphis. I hope I get this story right. And, you know, back in the day, you know how those things were, like, somebody get up and sing a couple of songs or something. It was kind of a loose vine. So Al Green gets up and sings with Willie Mitchell's band. And he's just met this guy. And Al Green goes, hey, I gotta get back to Green Bay or something. Can you lend me like $400 or some, it was a pretty, for the 70s or 60s, whatever, it was a pretty significant. And he, for some reason, he just trusted him. And he lent him the money. And a year later, Al Green Camp comes back to Memphis, and that's what started Al Green, the Al Green that we all know.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 44:00Billy Corgan?

  With that guy.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:02Billy Corgan?

  That same musician. So what I'm saying is,

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:04Billy Corgan?

  Life has a way of.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Yes, it does. And my, my, my whole life.

• 44:08Billy Corgan?

  I mean, your whole life is literally, if you hadn't have gone to a Starwood or whatever that night.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:14Billy Corgan?

  And met Kevin DeBrow or seen Quiet Riot.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Well, the same thing happened with Frankie Benelli, but then again, that's another story. But I can.

• 44:21Billy Corgan?

  But that's what I'm saying. There's something beautiful about that, how those things work.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  I went to see David Bowie at, uh, the only tour he did in the United States as Ziggy Stardust.

• 44:30Billy Corgan?

  There was only one, yeah.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  72.

• 44:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, only one. And they played at Pirates World in Miami. And.

• 44:37Billy Corgan?

  Sorry, it just sounds so funny.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  On Dania.

• 44:38Billy Corgan?

  Did it look like Pirates World?

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Pirates World was an amusement park that had a.

• 44:42Billy Corgan?

  Even better.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  A stage, you know? And, uh.

• 44:46Billy Corgan?

  Did, did, how, was, how was the attendance?

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Oh, it was sold out.

• 44:50Billy Corgan?

  Cause you know, in, cause that, the famous thing about that tour, cause it's only Ziggy's tour that he did.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:55Billy Corgan?

  Certain dates, it was like, sold out and.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:57Billy Corgan?

  And then other places, like, nobody would come because they didn't know who he was.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  South Florida had a huge gay community.

• 45:04Billy Corgan?

  Hmm.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  You know, so he was very, uh, very, uh, supported there.

• 45:09Billy Corgan?

  So that, so you got to see that lineup?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  I got to see that.

• 45:11Billy Corgan?

  Oh, wow.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  But more, uh, most important was that I got to see the opening band.

• 45:16Billy Corgan?

  Which was?

• 45:16Speaker 01

  Which was a, um, band called Ginger.

• 45:19Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  I had no idea who these guys are. I'm from Miami, they're from Fort Lauderdale, so it's like, two different worlds apart. I mean, the Latin, you know, Cubans trying to sound like, you know, like Three Dog Night.

• 45:32Billy Corgan?

  As you do.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  And he was Frankie was playing, you know, with American musician.

• 45:37Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  You know.

• 45:38Billy Corgan?

  Was Frankie Frankie even then? As a drummer.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:42Billy Corgan?

  You know, very.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Oh, even more. Even more, I mean, because he was younger.

• 45:47Billy Corgan?

  How do you turn that down?

• 45:49Speaker 01

  You mean?

• 45:50Billy Corgan?

  No, you know what I'm saying? He's always been one of those.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:53Billy Corgan?

  God bless him. I know he's not here anymore.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, uh, no, because he was younger and sometimes it's, you know, sometimes when you start working with certain people, things start.

• 46:03Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Tipping away from you, you know? That you kind of like conform to.

• 46:08Billy Corgan?

  Okay. I think that's funny that he was an outsized personality the first time he ever saw him.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  He was ruthless. I mean, he was seen ruthless, you know, to I, I, as he got older, but there was a certain uh, uh, innocence.

• 46:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  About his ruthlessness when he played, you know? And, uh, so anyways, so I, I walk in and I, the, uh, the opening band is playing and I'm going, oh my God, this guy's the drummer. See, wow, this guy's amazing, you know? So Bowie comes on and he does his thing. And so the next day is my birthday, November 18th. And we're at the place called The Flying Machine, which was a club in Full Autoville where everybody got together. And that was the, the rock club. And so I'm, I'm talking to some people and they go, hey, that's one of the guys that opened up for Bowie last night. And I run over and I go.

• 46:58Billy Corgan?

  It was Frankie.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  I thought he was the bass player. And I go, hey, man, you know, I saw you guys last night with Bowie. I love the band, especially your drummer. I thought he was amazing. And he's just letting me talk, and he's like smiling. And then he goes, hi, I'm Frankie. I'm the drummer. We started playing the next day.

• 47:14Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, because the band were, had broken up anyway. So that was kind of like a last minute replacement for somebody else.

• 47:20Billy Corgan?

  But see, that's again, this.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:22Billy Corgan?

  Fate, right?

• 47:23Speaker 01

  So that was 1972. So fast forward to 1977. And I wasn't looking for a gig. I was playing with Frankie and Bob Morelet and, you know, a couple of the other guys and uh, we had a singer, 20 Childs. I don't know if you remember her.

• 47:37Billy Corgan?

  I do. I do. Yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  15, 16 years old.

• 47:41Billy Corgan?

  Wow. So.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, we met at the parking, uh, Rainbow Parking Lot.

• 47:46Billy Corgan?

  Crazy.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  And we put a band together. It was called Scarab.

• 47:50Billy Corgan?

  Scarab. That's a good name.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, The Beatles, Scarab, you know?

• 47:54Billy Corgan?

  But still it has a kind of a.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:56Billy Corgan?

  Mystical.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Mystical name to it. Yeah.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  So, so Quiet Riot, so I, you know, I, I'm in L A nineteen seventy seven and you know, every night you went out because that's if you did not go out, you might miss that great opportunity to meet.

• 48:12Billy Corgan?

  Ah, so it's networking and.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Networking, you know, so every, everybody was saying, hey, man, you know, you gotta go see this band Van Halen, they're playing the whiskey nineteen seventy seven. And I go, okay, so I tried to get in and it's like, well, sold out. Okay. And so some guys were saying, well, you know, there's a, there's a club down the street called the Starwood and, you know, wearing my six inch heels and walking down for about a mile.

• 48:37Billy Corgan?

  Thankfully, now you're skinny. You're skinny now because you're poor, but you're skinny.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Starving musician, I was be effortless.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Uh, which, which really, you know, like this whole eighties fashion of us looking very feminine.

• 48:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  We didn't have any money to buy clothes. So, you know, let's say you went home with some girl to her place.

• 48:59Billy Corgan?

  A friend, a, a.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  A kind, a kind girl. They were very kind. And you get up in the morning, you go through the closet and you pick something to wear that weekend with your band.

• 49:09Billy Corgan?

  That was clean.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  You know, yeah.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  So, so that was the fashion sense of, of the, of the, of the strip bands, right? Okay, so I, I make it to the Starwood and I'm kind of like, you know, it was a different crowd than, than the Rainbow. It was more like younger crowd. So I'm like, okay, local crap too. There was less of the, uh, expatriates that moved from England to try, you know, to now they're living in L A. So there was more of that sense.

• 49:42Billy Corgan?

  Well, it's all you, you, useful and.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And now at the Starwood, it's like local kids, you know? And so the band comes on and they have a production going on Quiet Riot, you know? And they got sirens and, and flashing lights and, and then I see Randy. I go, wow.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  You know, because by then I've been touring in a, in a, in a

• 50:07Billy Corgan?

  You've seen plenty of bands.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, all over the United States going like, you know, playing clubs, seeing what, what else is going on. I see these guys and I go, wow, they're, they're better prepared for the next step than everybody that I've seen, you know, so far. So, you know, Randy is the one that caught my attention and they had an image, they had a presentation.

• 50:28Billy Corgan?

  Did you, did you, did you understand Randy's talent right away?

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. It was, it was a glimpse.

• 50:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Because he had so much more than just what he was doing on stage, but at least

• 50:42Speaker 01

  it was a glimpse into, into everything.

• 50:44Billy Corgan?

  It's funny because if you go back and listen to the music that he was making then, certainly he can play, he can play, but the Randy that comes later hasn't quite gotten there yet.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I can tell you about the, the day that he came over my place and played me the Blizzra Boss record. And remember, we had just been playing for about a year before that together.

• 51:08Billy Corgan?

  Sure, and you knew him very well and he was your friend and.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  And I was teaching at his mom's school, so we spent a lot of time together and I listened to it and I go, what happened? And he says, well, I asked Ozzy what he wanted me to write and he said, be yourself. He could not be himself in L.A.

• 51:26Billy Corgan?

  Can you explain that a little bit more, what that mean, what that?

• 51:29Speaker 01

  The music industry. They wanted.

• 51:31Billy Corgan?

  Everyone wants to get signed and they're trying to figure out what they need to do to get signed. So it's more about.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:36Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Uh, if, at that time, punk and new wave had come in.

• 51:41Billy Corgan?

  That's right.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  You know, and if you were not Devo, if you were not, uh, the NAC, in the motels, they, they were not interested in you.

• 51:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Uh, glam, rock had already passed.

• 51:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  You know? And so what we were doing as Quiet Riot was dinosaur music, quote unquote, from the record companies, you know? That's why Randy left. To join Ozzy, you know. And but anyways, to that night, going back to that night, so Quiet Riot finished the set. And then I see Kevin DeBrow walking around the club and I go up to him, just like I did with Frankie. It's my nature. I always do that. Not because I'm looking for a gig, but just because I like to tell people, hey, you're on the right track. I really appreciate what you're doing. You know, keep doing it.

• 52:29Billy Corgan?

  What was it about? What was it about what he was doing?

• 52:35Billy Corgan?

  That caught your ear? You know what I'm saying? It's easy sometimes to to look at, you know, obviously Quiet Riot.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:43Billy Corgan?

  Made this seminal record and you were part of that, but what is it in that night that you think, and you know, cause like clubs, bad sound, like what what made you go, I gotta say something.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  In a club environment, it was a showcase club. The National Acts would play there too. They checked all the boxes.

• 53:03Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so what are the boxes for you?

• 53:07Speaker 01

  They had a vision. They had a production, the a presentation. What they really needed was better songs. And when we were young, we had this romantic vis, you know, idea that some big time producer was gonna come in and magically change everything and fix.

• 53:27Billy Corgan?

  Fixing, yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  You know?

• 53:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  So we thought, okay, we're gonna take this as far as we can.

• 53:33Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  But every time that we try that, it's a

• 53:39Speaker 01

  every time we would do a demo and come back with a demo, whatever they were asking us to sound like was passe.

• 53:46Billy Corgan?

  I see. So that that period when before Randy leaves and you're in Quiet Riot in that period, how long is that?

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Seventy seven, seventy eight.

• 53:55Billy Corgan?

  So it's a yearish?

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm sorry, seventy eight, seventy nine.

• 53:58Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so how long is that? A year to you?

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Well, seventy eight and seventy nine, so I would say about a year and a half.

• 54:05Billy Corgan?

  So it's like, we're gonna make it and nobody wants us.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  A lot of heartbreaks.

• 54:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Oh, painful. We tried everything. We

• 54:13Speaker 01

  we're having a meeting at Randy's house and what are we gonna do? The record companies are not paying attention. And I say, just like, you know, something stupid, say, yeah, why don't we get our fans and take them and have them pick it in front of the record.

• 54:29Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I know this story. Yeah.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  And Kevin goes, that's a great idea. And I said, I'm kidding. He says, no, no, let's do this. So we get two flatbed trucks, flatbed. This is a

• 54:44Speaker 01

  an insurance nightmare. We could have gotten sued for it. Something happened to any of these kids.

• 54:50Billy Corgan?

  You're not thinking about getting sued.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 54:51Billy Corgan?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  You just said, we had two roadies, two of our roadies to drive it.

• 54:56Billy Corgan?

  Yes, of course.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  And they did that. So the first stop was Warner Brothers in.

• 55:04Billy Corgan?

  And you went to every label.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  Yes, but what happened was in Burbank, you had to have a permit to demonstrate. So they got kicked, get out of here, kids. And so everything got off because we had a publicist that was just trying to get, you know, journalists down to cover the whole event.

• 55:24Billy Corgan?

  Okay, right.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  So on the last one, CBS, because, you know, it was routed, you know, CBS and being Santa Monica, that was the last stop. That's the

• 55:36Speaker 01

  the cameras showed up, you know, with reporters.

• 55:39Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  We got that. And then we got one person that called up the band and says, hey, I'm interested in what you guys did. Let's have a meeting. So we show up there and to his office. And the guy goes, okay, and he brings out Billboard magazine and says, you see this Rod Stewart song, Do You Think I'm Sexy? If you guys come up with a song like this.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  We might have a demo deal. So we rushed over and we wrote a Do You Think I'm Sexy soundtrack. It was called One in a Million.

• 56:14Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  You can hear it on YouTube.

• 56:16Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we go back. Do you think I'm sexy? It's off the charts, not there anymore. So the guy goes, I'm sorry. Uh, we're not really interested in what, and that's.

• 56:28Billy Corgan?

  That was it.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  That was it. Yeah.

• 56:36Billy Corgan?

  So.

• 56:39Billy Corgan?

  Randy gets the call. I know he'd had some brief encounter with Sharon in, in, in LA, but then he gets the call to go to England.

• 56:50Billy Corgan?

  Because they hadn't been able to find somebody in England for Ozzy.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Or, or in, in Los Angeles neither.

• 56:55Billy Corgan?

  Okay, right. Because, yeah. So, uh. Did you know Randy had gotten that call and, and were you in the loop at that time?

• 57:04Speaker 01

  We had just finished rehearsal that evening. And I go, Randy, I see Randy packing more than usual. And I go. What are you doing after rehearsal? And he says, well, this guy Dana Strom, you know, the bass player from Slaughter.

• 57:19Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Uh, he keeps calling me because there's this guy Ozzy Osbourne from singer from Black Sabbath. And he's putting a band together and he's been bugging me, Dana, not Ozzy, to come down on audition for him. And I just want him to stop calling me. So I'm just gonna go and. You know, and play. And I say, I saw Tony, I can't believe it. Because at that time we hit the wall. We were just like, you know.

• 57:46Billy Corgan?

  Out of, out of options, yeah.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like, so I tell him, oh man, are you kidding? Yeah. Go, because I, I've been trying to get in touch with, with Ozzy's people so I could audition for it, you know? Because at that time we were just.

• 57:58Billy Corgan?

  You were trying to get in touch with him?

• 57:59Speaker 01

  I was trying to get in touch. Everybody in town was like, yeah, except for Randy, he didn't care about it, you know? So Randy.

• 58:06Billy Corgan?

  He wasn't even particularly a, a fan, right? I mean.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  No, he wasn't.

• 58:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  It wasn't, uh, but you know, situations like that make it even better. Because then you're, eh, the last thing Ozzy needed was a fanboy in the band.

• 58:21Billy Corgan?

  Or a fake Tony Iommi.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. So he had no Tony Iommi influence in his playing. But he had a lot of classical music.

• 58:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  You know, which I found out when I started teaching at his school. And in between lessons, uh, Musonia, his family had, I still have it, that's in North Hollywood. And between lessons, I would hear Randy playing acoustic classical music. I go, I don't know you play like that. He says, well. It's, this is not for Quiet Riot, so I cannot really, you know, bring songs like these, you know? And that's what, but he was able to bring that out, playing with Ozzy.

• 58:57Billy Corgan?

  Were you in touch with them when he did get the gig in, in England and was making the, making the first couple of records?

• 59:03Speaker 01

  It's not like today that you can text somebody, uh, you know, back then it was like.

• 59:07Billy Corgan?

  But I get, like, you were still teaching at the, the family.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, I was.

• 59:11Billy Corgan?

  So you knew kinda.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  I asked his mom.

• 59:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Uh, how, how's Randy doing?

• 59:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  And she was, she would give me an update, which would be like, he, he, he would write postcards. That was his updates.

• 59:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:23Billy Corgan?

  So you had some sense it was going well. He's got the gig, he's recording.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that.

• 59:27Billy Corgan?

  And you know, we all know, if you're recording, that means somebody's paying, that means something's happening.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  I didn't even know he was in town when I got the phone call that they were auditioning. And they wanted me to come in to audition.

• 59:39Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  From Sharon.

• 59:41Billy Corgan?

  Hmm.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  I didn't even know he was in town.

• 59:45Billy Corgan?

  Okay. This is later, though.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Later, nineteen eighty-one, yeah.

• 59:48Billy Corgan?

  Okay. So, um.

• 59:55Billy Corgan?

  You kind of bounce around for a while. You're not really sure what you're doing. Quiet Riot kind of dissipates for a while.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, as soon as Randy left, Quiet Riot ceased to exist.

• 1:00:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, and you thought that's it, it's done.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I, I cut my hair.

• 1:00:08Billy Corgan?

  Uh-oh. You went new wave.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  I went new wave.

• 1:00:12Billy Corgan?

  Skinny tie?

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Uh, well, you know, it, it, a lot of the new wave music that we were doing, we, we put it, we put a band together. It was Frankie Bonelli, Pete Camita, who was the guitar playing the thumbs.

• 1:00:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Chicago.

• 1:00:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  Who later became the second bass player in Cheap Trick.

• 1:00:30Billy Corgan?

  That's how I know his name.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:32Billy Corgan?

  When they, when they, and, and I know, I've never met Pete.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:35Billy Corgan?

  Um, but it was weird because they, you know, Cheap Trick basically hired someone who looked like Tom. To try to trick everyone that he was Tom, which is, I always felt bad for Pete. Like, it's a weird gig. Like, you kind of look like Tom, but you're not Tom and.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  It was Pete.

• 1:00:52Billy Corgan?

  Well, no, that's what I'm saying. That's how I know the name.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love Pete. And, and then, uh, we have Bob James, who was the second singer in Montrose.

• 1:01:00Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so Pete was,

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  uh, his girlfriend was Barbara Baker, Roy Thomas Baker's wife, or ex-wife at the time.

• 1:01:15Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  But they were all living in the same house.

• 1:01:18Billy Corgan?

  Well, that's Roy liked an open life. Let's put it that way. God bless him.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Okay. So, so all of a sudden Barbara is taking care of the band.

• 1:01:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  We were called a private army.

• 1:01:28Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  And we started going in the studio like Cherokee and so on to.

• 1:01:33Billy Corgan?

  And the idea is to get a record deal is kind of a new wavish band.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  The wavish band, but you know, it's like, we looked, just because we had shorter hair didn't mean that we sounded like we had shorter hair.

• 1:01:45Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  So, uh, we wrote, you know, uh, the main writers in the song, uh, Reach Out and Take It, which actually wound up as the Cheap Trick song on Heavy Metal, the animated.

• 1:01:58Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  Movie.

• 1:01:59Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:02:01Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know that one.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we did the original one.

• 1:02:04Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I have to look that one up.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  And, and here's the irony. So we did the song with one of the, uh, uh, Roy Thomas Baker's engineers at Cherokee. And, and Pete gives it to Roy and says, nah, I, I don't like the song. I, it's nothing, nothing original, right? Then he turns around and produces that song. It's sounding exactly the same as what we did in the demo for, for the soundtrack of the movie.

• 1:02:38Billy Corgan?

  Well, that's rock and roll, right?

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  What are you gonna do? You know?

• 1:02:43Billy Corgan?

  So that band, that band never got signed, right?

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:02:45Billy Corgan?

  It was kind of a-

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  They never got signed.

• 1:02:47Billy Corgan?

  One of those LA almost-

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  Pete left to join-

• 1:02:50Billy Corgan?

  Trick, right.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  You know, and then shortly after that, I, uh, I joined Ozzy.

• 1:02:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Which leads me to the next question, because in there is the epiphany.

• 1:03:00Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  The epiphany. So, you know, I'm playing in Dubrow, Kevin's band. And this is after Private Army, just, this is like, you know, so Kevin says, "Uh, how would you like to, you know, move in with me and, and join, uh, you know, play with me?" You know, in Dubrow, he says, "Well, you know, I don't have a better choice right now." And I, and I love playing with Kevin and, you know, we got along great. It was a whole different Kevin at the time. You know, it was, it wasn't the rock star Kevin, it was, uh, just Kevin.

• 1:03:30Billy Corgan?

  Uh.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  You know? And, um, so, you know, I have been on a spiritual journey

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  for a while. You know, I mean, as a matter of fact, you know, once you get in the book, if, if I tell you that it's really a

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  a spiritual journey, that's what the whole book, but it's, it's not in your face.

• 1:03:52Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  I just mentioned it once, and I figure if somebody's gonna get it, it's gonna get it as soon as I say it one time.

• 1:03:59Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  And so, uh,

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  there were, there were two phases to it. One, um, the first phase of my, of my epiphany is I'm laying in bed and I'm meditating. And I hear this, I have my eyes closed and I'm here this buzzing, really high pitched.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  And I open my eyes and there's this circles.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  Of energy.

• 1:04:28Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Bloating over my head.

• 1:04:30Billy Corgan?

  Like a visual representation too?

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  It was really a circle.

• 1:04:36Billy Corgan?

  No, and I believe you. I'm saying I'm just trying to picture it.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  It was okay. It looked like a fan where you put a fan and start spinning and then the the center has more of a solid mass because it's holding the blades. And then you got the blades who are more transparent. And it's like hovering over me and I'm going, okay, I don't want this to disappear if I move.

• 1:04:58Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  So I'm just stood still in bed. I'm laying down and then it hovers over me and it goes to my feet and then it projects itself on the white wall. The room was all white. And I started seeing visions of things in 3D because they were spinning.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  And then it goes back into that solid circle. And I've been be I've been aware of it ever since.

• 1:05:28Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  It's with me all the time.

• 1:05:32Billy Corgan?

  Do you think it was the an awakening to a a sentience or a greater sense of? You know, because there's a lot of belief now with quantum physics that, you know, time, space, as we perceive it, is not what we think it is.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  I'm a true believer of that. I went I went down the rabbit hole with with quantum physics during COVID.

• 1:05:54Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  It's it's I'm a different person.

• 1:05:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Did you? Do you see the? Do you see what you've experienced or saw as a spiritual thing or more of a quantum thing?

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  To me, they're the same.

• 1:06:07Billy Corgan?

  Okay. They're indistinguishable.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:10Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:11Billy Corgan?

  You ascribe it to a particular religion or it doesn't it doesn't matter?

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  I'm Christian.

• 1:06:15Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  I'm Christian. So, you know, after that.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  At that time, you remember, this is LA night, early 70s. It was the new age.

• 1:06:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  Spirituality.

• 1:06:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, you had a bunch of personality cults out here in LA and.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  All of that. So everybody was into something, you know? And somebody turned me on to, onto T. Lobsen Rampa, which was a Tibetan monk and he had a series of books and.

• 1:06:44Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  And that's how I got into meditation.

• 1:06:47Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  It was kind of like not the right path, but it was the path leading me to that. And then after that, I started, I read the, the whole, the New Testament and the Old Testament and the New Testament. One book, Bible that I still have with, is in my possession. And at the end of it, I came to the, that's, that's when I had my epiphany. I said, you know, I made peace with God. I'm, I'm sleeping on the floor, shag carpeting on a flash Gordon sheet that somebody gave me. And I made peace with God that as long as my fingers kept moving, I was gonna keep going.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  But my relationship with God was more important than anything else. That was it. I just let it go.

• 1:07:41Billy Corgan?

  As you, when you say let it go, the stress of life, the worry about what's gonna happen to me?

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:47Billy Corgan?

  Just.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  All I knew was to be prepared.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  And just let God take over. That's it.

• 1:07:57Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  Just show up to everything that I'm doing. If I'm having an audition, I'm gonna be prepared.

• 1:08:03Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  But the final decision is up to God.

• 1:08:10Billy Corgan?

  So.

• 1:08:13Billy Corgan?

  Randy's with Ozzy.

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:08:16Billy Corgan?

  Bob Daisley bangs off in one of their famous rows, which went on for forever, in, out, in, out. And you end up getting the gig.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:27Billy Corgan?

  Did Randy have influence on that?

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  Well, Randy is the one who told Ozzy and Sharon about me, that I existed. I had no resume.

• 1:08:36Billy Corgan?

  Hence you getting an audition.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  It happened twice. So, you know, a couple of days after my epiphany. And I was playing in the band called Angel, too.

• 1:08:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, the the famous Southern California Angel.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Punky Meadows.

• 1:08:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  You know, Angel. But they had just lost their record deal to Casablanca.

• 1:08:55Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  And so it was kind of like, but but I was happy. I loved the guys. They were really nice. It was cool hang and I was playing in Angel, you know. I had an identity.

• 1:09:06Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  I'm in the band, Angel, you know.

• 1:09:08Billy Corgan?

  They were they were a big band.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were a big band, yeah. And so I really liked them enough that when I got the first call from Sharon. And says, I, Kevin Newbro on this phone, he says, hey Rudy, is somebody calling you? And I go, nobody knows me. Hello? He said, oh, hi Rudy, this is Sharon, Ozzy's manager, Randy tells me about you and we want you to come out to audition. And something that I learned later on in life, even though I I quit drinking twenty eight years ago. But recently, within the last maybe five years, when I joined AA, I learned that I'm an alcoholic.

• 1:09:53Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  So one of my alcoholic decisions was to turn down, because I was shooting from the hip.

• 1:10:01Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  I didn't think about it, didn't meditate on it, didn't say, hmm, wow, that sounds great, wow. Yeah.

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, when you, you know what I mean, I didn't not take.

• 1:10:12Billy Corgan?

  So your first reaction was just, no, thank you.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  No, thanks, I'm playing in Angel. And so she hangs up on me.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  And I say, well, okay, so.

• 1:10:23Billy Corgan?

  How dare you?

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  How dare you, exactly. So Kevin goes, who was that? And I go, oh, that's Randy's and Ozzy's manager, Sharon, they wanted me to audition, but, you know, you know, I'm playing in Angel. And he goes, then he starts yelling at me. And I go, oops, I guess you're right. And so, you know, little did I know that the next day I was gonna get a call from Ozzy. Right? At that time, I just said, okay, this is.

• 1:10:53Billy Corgan?

  You let it go.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  Let it go. Okay, because I was in that, let it go, you know, it's okay. I get the second call the next day, and now at that time, it's like, oh, yes.

• 1:11:03Billy Corgan?

  So Ozzy himself called.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Ozzy himself says, yeah, man, you know, Randy tells me that you're the guy and we just auditioned a bunch of hacks and, and it says, yes. I'll be there. So Randy picks me up and because they were in a crush, they had to meet and do this whole thing really quickly. Uh, because within 10 days.

• 1:11:22Billy Corgan?

  That tour, tour dates coming.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, 10 days, they were going on tour. And so they picked me up right after I said yes, and Randy takes me over to the Beverly Hilton. And there was a Trader Vixx underneath and we go and there's Ozzy and Sharon and Tommy Aldrich. And, and I'm sitting with Ozzy and he's telling me, you know, he's like telling me all about Randy and how much, you know, how much he appreciated him and loved him, and I'm thinking, wow, this is, this is a good place to be in. There's a lot of gratitude and appreciation going on, you know? And, and he just told me at the, at the end of it, he says, man, I, I, I get a good vibe from you, just be able to play.

• 1:12:07Billy Corgan?

  And that was it? You didn't even play? You just?

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  I hadn't played yet for him.

• 1:12:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, just we, we think you're the guy, let's go.

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so the next day for the audition, Randy shows up at Kevin's place. Cause you know, nowadays a 10 year old or a fetus can actually play Crazy Train.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  Back then, it's like, I never heard the song. I gotta learn this, you know? So it was like, okay, so Randy goes, okay, it goes like this, you know, because he needed to like, you know, within,

• 1:12:37Billy Corgan?

  Let's go.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  An hour, we had to be in a rehearsal place, playing these songs live for Ozzy and Sharon. And so he teaches me Crazy Train and, and I don't know. Those were the audition songs. So we, we go over, I had to retain it. And then we drive over to rehearsal. Uh, we do one, one pass with Tommy.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  And then Ozzy and Sharon show up and they listen to us play the two songs with Ozzy looking at the band. Then Ozzy gets up on stage, we play the songs again. And Ozzy turns to me and says, hey, man, do you want the gig? I said, yes. And my life went into Panavision color at that moment. It was like, wow, I'm in this world now.

• 1:13:31Billy Corgan?

  Boom. Yeah. Hot band, hot album, albums, right? Back to back and.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had a gig with the most amazing musicians I've ever played with.

• 1:13:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  As a band.

• 1:13:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Um, so thank you because, you know, our interview today is two parts and uh, I don't want to go over the tragic plane crash with Randy because it's it's been so talked about. But so I thought rather than sort of go over that one more time because it's a it's a painful thing. And and even as a fan, thinking of how painful is, you know, having met some of the family through the years, just in my own life and and even being able to express my gratitude for what a great musician Randy was. I thought it was because you guys were friends. I thought

• 1:14:30Billy Corgan?

  rather than end on tragedy, it's there, it's part of, you know, his story and Ozzy's story and your story. Um, I thought just if you could just talk a little bit about Randy as a musician because the shocking thing to me in in researching and getting ready to talk to you is he was only 25 years old. And you think of the music that he produced by the time he was 25, that we're still listening to and we still celebrate him. And even when we did the last Ozzy show together, there was that beautiful moment where Randy's mom kind of talked a little bit.

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:07Billy Corgan?

  And they were able to pay tribute to Ozzy and Randy in the show. It was so emotional, you know?

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  It was, it was. Uh, well, you know, after Randy died, I just lost the joy of making music. I mean, I'm still trying to get that feeling of being in a band like that.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  Not only because of the caliber of the musicianship and the music,

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  but also the caliber of the integrity.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Which is something

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  very rare to find musicians

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  with the musical integrity of the level of Randy Rhoads. You know, of course, you had Ozzy. Ozzy, who went on to, after Randy passed away. I mean, Randy was his first discovery. And I, I look at his career as a career of mentorship and discovering some of the greatest talent in music.

• 1:16:15Billy Corgan?

  It's crazy.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. It is.

• 1:16:20Speaker 01

  And diversity.

• 1:16:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  He said, you know, I'm

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  I joined the band, I passed the audition, and there's so many stories that I can tell you about it. But getting to the point, the next day, he's doing an interview, and there's actually a photo session that goes along with the interview. And they ask him, so who's in the band? And he goes, well, we got Randy Rhoads. And, you know, then he talks about Randy and Tommy Aldrich, and then he says, and we got Rudy from Cuba.

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  That's for Circus Magazine. Finally, you know, he did that interview like in April, and I got, I opened the magazine like in July because it used to take that long. And I'm like, oh, wow, Ozzy interview, maybe, maybe there's something about us, you know, the, the guys in the band. I open it, Rudy from Cuba, and I went,

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  wow. He doesn't mind that I am from Cuba.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  You know.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  And I, I. That was like the.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  What confirmed it. Because he has, he had always been so gracious. You know, again, I've been, I've been in the band at that time for like three or four months. Sharon. Opened her house to me, her family home. I moved in with them. The day that I got the audition. I moved in.

• 1:17:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:48Speaker 01

  Because I was sleeping on the floor.

• 1:17:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  And he says, well, you can, we have these bungalows here. You can stay one of them.

• 1:17:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  Nobody did that for me before. Ozzy. We were playing pool. He takes a look at me. And he goes, man, you look like. You need some rock and roll clothes. I did, I, I, I'm telling you, I was wearing all these girls. Little outfits, you know.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  It looks at me. So he goes to his room. Brings a suitcase and pours it on the pool table. And he says, grab whatever you want. And I'm like. Oh, my God, that's the jacket from that album cover and this magazine. And, and I'm like, I can't grab this is here. So grab me stuff is here. Wear this. And that's what I wore on the first photo session. You know.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  As far as diversity. Me, Cuban, then he's had all these different nationalities in his band. J K Lee. You know. We got Randy Castillo. We got Mike Inez, Robert Trujillo. Am I missing anybody?

• 1:18:51Billy Corgan?

  No, but that's, but that's, that's what I was saying. Rock and, and heavy metal is uniquely voiced for. Bringing people together in a way that other genres just don't seem to do that.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Ozzy worked on vibe. It's in.

• 1:19:05Billy Corgan?

  Very intuitive person.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. That was it. He didn't care where, where you look like, where you came from.

• 1:19:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:14Billy Corgan?

  It's a lot to process, but thank you for sharing that about Randy because I think that's, you know, when somebody passes, it forces us to look back, like with Ozzy passing, it forced us to look back. But speaking of Randy, you know, by the time as a fan, I even knew what it had, he was gone, you know, because I love those records and I, I learned guitar to those records, you know, and I knew that he was special, but I didn't know how special because what do you know when you're 14, 15 years old? You know what I mean? But I love what you said about integrity because in a way, his talent is so shockingly ahead of its time.

• 1:19:58Billy Corgan?

  You know, he set the template for so much guitar music to follow that in a way, he was all, he almost kind of snuck up on everybody. It was so explosive. And the other thing which you, you would know is, you know, they did that first album and then while they were waiting, they went ahead and recorded the second album. So when he made both of those albums, he didn't even know if people were going to like what he did.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  When I joined the band, that album was not mixed yet. So maybe a month later, after I joined the band, the cassette appears and Ozzy puts it in the tour bus, listens to it for the very first time and it was so different from the first one.

• 1:20:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  That he hated it.

• 1:20:43Billy Corgan?

  It was kind of shocking. Even the first time I heard it, it was a little bit like.

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  But because it was, it was the future.

• 1:20:51Billy Corgan?

  Well, that's what I'm saying. Even as a fan in 1982 or whatever was the year, I remember listening to it right the week it came out thinking.

• 1:21:00Billy Corgan?

  Right?

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. It sounded so different because the blizzard is more seventies sounding.

• 1:21:06Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  The way it's, it's engineer and.

• 1:21:09Billy Corgan?

  Oh, no, Randy's taken off there.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  And by the second one, it was like, and Ozzy was not ready for it.

• 1:21:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  Even though he recorded it, but the, I think it was more having to do with the mix being kind of like wet and a lot of atmosphere to it, you know?

• 1:21:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  And he wanted a little bit of a drier record was actually when we did Speak of the Devil, that's a very dry live recording.

• 1:21:35Billy Corgan?

  Sure. Sure. Okay. Let's stop there. We have so much more to talk about.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  Well, yeah.

• 1:21:40Billy Corgan?

  End of part one.