Kevin Cronin | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

REO Speedwagon frontman Kevin Cronin joins Billy Corgan for an intimate conversation about Midwest rock, a shared Catholic upbringing, and five decades inside one of America’s defining bands. Cronin shares the real story behind writing “Keep On Loving You,” his getting fired in the early days—and later rehired—by REO, and the creative partnership with guitarist Gary Richrath that led to the diamond-selling Hi Infidelity. From Chicago folk clubs to Soldier Field, as well as unknowingly providing cover for gun runners with the band’s plane, to navigating the industry alongside titan Irving Azoff, Cronin reflects on the working-class ethos behind rock and roll made from the heart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  I remember if I stripped the piano, I looked at him. We looked at each other and it was like we kinda knew.

• 0:37Billy Corgan?

  I think you have something that's super rare, which is earnest quality, I believe, what you're singing.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, you know, some people would say I was fired. Other people would say that we had creative differences.

• 0:49Billy Corgan?

  Okay, you tell me, because you were in the room.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  I was fired.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  The plane was found with no seats, full of Quaaludes, pot, and guns.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 1:06Billy Corgan?

  I heard them all, but that's a new one.

• 1:09Billy Corgan?

  Kevin Cronin, thank you so much. I'm so honored to talk to you today. I've literally been listening to you my, almost my entire life.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Well, you couldn't help it. You were from Chicago, right?

• 1:18Billy Corgan?

  Well, in Chicago, in Chicago. We'll talk about that. But I want to start here. Born in Evanston, Illinois? Is that accurate?

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:28Billy Corgan?

  So I was born in Chicago in the lake. So essentially, we were born about 20 miles apart. And although we're a slightly different generation, we grew up in the same world, Catholic world of Chicago.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39Billy Corgan?

  And back then, Chicago was heavily Catholic, heavily working class. It's changed a bit. So I feel like there's an understanding there where maybe people outside of the Midwest maybe wouldn't understand what made your band, REO Speedwagon, important, what you guys were talking about important. It's certainly resonated with the world that I grew up in. So um, let's sort of start there.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:03Billy Corgan?

  If you want to talk about sort of your upbringing and kind of. Because I found, and I don't know if you found this through the years, you know, American culture is so dominated by New York and and Los Angeles. But they oftentimes overlook how valuable artists from other parts of the country are in contributing to the greater conversation of where what we experience.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 2:23Billy Corgan?

  Whether it's, you know, artists that came up out of the bayou, singing those types of songs with a little bit of French flavor. And of course, the Midwest, we grew up, you know, in the shadow of the great blues artists.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:34Billy Corgan?

  You can't not grow up in Chicago and not be affected by the blues. So if you can kind of start there, please.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, I grew up in Chicago, uh, in the, we, I was born in Evanston, but we moved to a all Catholic, all Caucasian suburb. And I grew up thinking that there were Catholics and non Catholics. And you know where all the non Catholics go. At the end of the road, you know? So, but it was weird. And I remember, you know, getting to be about, you know, into my teen years and I'm like, I'm not buying this, you know, this doesn't feel right to me, you know, there's, there's other people in the world and, but they're, but I'm not living amongst them.

• 3:18Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  So when I graduated high school, man, I high tailed it up to the north side. And uh, went to Loyola University for a couple of years, played in local bands around Chicago. And uh, and you and I share something because I, I, I did a little homework and

• 3:39Speaker 01

  I was looking for, when I went to the north side, I was looking for a guitar player and a bass player for my band. So I called the Chicago Sun Times. And I said, I needed to place a want ad for guitar player and bass player wanted for original music band. Had to be the right, and she said, no, you have to get, you have to take out two want ads, one for each instrument.

• 4:02Billy Corgan?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  I'm like, where am I going to get 30 bucks? So I, long story short, I start something called the Musicians Referral Service. I'm running it out of my second story walk up just off uh, in Rogers Park, near Loyola University. I get a call from a guy who says, uh,

• 4:22Speaker 01

  I'm in a band. We have one record out. We're signed to Epic Records. And you know the old saying, you have your whole life to write your first album and a year to write your second. So, long story short, that was Gary Richrath. Who, if you know anything about REO Speedwagon, Gary Richrath is... He's the reason that REO Speedwagon got on the map.

• 4:49Billy Corgan?

  Is it... because I was gonna ask you this, but we're here now. Was... is REO's Gary's band and it's like, does this make sense? You know, there's always gotta be somebody who's like, "This is really kind of my band."

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Well, it certainly was. And then after the first album, he realized he needed some... He didn't want to do it all himself.

• 5:10Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  So he saw my one at Hanging in the Chicago Guitar Gallery, a little flyer. So, we started out, and of course, he was my big brother. I looked up to him because he was just...

• 5:23Billy Corgan?

  What was the age difference?

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Uh, two years.

• 5:25Billy Corgan?

  Okay. But when you're young, that seems like a lot.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  I was 21, he was 23. That's the...

• 5:30Billy Corgan?

  And he'd already been touring nationally.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Already been... well, kind of regionally.

• 5:34Billy Corgan?

  But still, signed to Epic, this is no small thing.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Exactly. The first album sold about 200,000 or so copies. Irving Azoff was the manager, which didn't hurt.

• 5:43Billy Corgan?

  A fellow Illinoisan.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Fellow Illinoisan, Danville, Illinois. And so Gary met me. I played a song, the first real song I ever wrote. I played it for him on my Guild acoustic 12-string. And then I did one song that I used to play in the folk clubs around Chicago that I thought no one knew of. It's the second cut on side two of "Mad Men Across the Water." The first cut on side two of "Mad Men Across the Water" is this long opus that Elton and Bernie wrote about Native Americans. And it's kind of a cool thing, but I think it lost a lot of people. Second cut is a song called "Holiday Inn."

• 6:21Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  I thought, sure, I was the only one in the world who ever heard it. And Gary felt the same way. So I just, of all the songs...

• 6:28Billy Corgan?

  Oh my goodness.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Of all the songs in the world that I could have picked to play. So that, it was like... Boom. It was like it was meant to be. And so, so yeah, but it was his, it was, he was the, he's the guy who Irving saw and said, yeah, because they were playing fraternity parties and stuff like that. But when Gary came, Irving saw it and went, boom.

• 6:50Billy Corgan?

  That's interesting. Talking about a little about your background, because I think these things are so valuable as a fellow songwriter.

• 6:59Billy Corgan?

  Dad, World War II?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:01Billy Corgan?

  What branch of the service was your dad in?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  He was in the army. They plucked him out of Loyola University Business School and he ended up in Germany. He was there right at the end of the war.

• 7:13Billy Corgan?

  Okay. So did he see combat or?

• 7:16Speaker 01

  He saw some combat.

• 7:17Billy Corgan?

  And then he saw the aftermath of the Nazis out of power?

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:21Billy Corgan?

  Did he talk about that stuff at home or?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Well, he, he never did until he got to be about like into his eighties, into his late eighties. And, and I was taking him to the VA because I'm like, Dad, you've, you know, well, first of all, my dad sent me a clipping from the Chicago Tribune that said, that basically got me out of going to Vietnam. If I wouldn't have seen this little article in, in, because the draft numbers had, had happened, so.

• 7:55Billy Corgan?

  And they were doing the, like, the lottery?

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Like a lottery. And if you got a low number, see you later. I was, I got number like 86. So I'm like, I'm screwed. What am I going to do? Do I go to Canada? I'm not going to go to Vietnam. Like, my dad sends me a clipping from the Chicago, from the metro section of the, of the, of the Chicago Tribune, this big, saying, young men born between October 1st and December 31st of 1951 are exempt from, from the draft.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  I would have never seen that. I would have gone to Canada.

• 8:32Billy Corgan?

  Was there a reason for that?

• 8:34Speaker 01

  You know, my, my, my guess is that maybe they had enough guys already through the lottery. Billy, I don't know. It doesn't make sense. My dad's, my dad's theory was it was, there were some Chicago politicians who had kids, you know?

• 8:51Billy Corgan?

  That does sound about right. Like, let's just make something up, right? It's gotta be broad enough that you can't pinpoint them. That sounds very Chicago.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  You know, very Chicago.

• 9:01Billy Corgan?

  But back to your daddy for a second. When he did talk about his experiences, what did, what did he relay, if you don't mind sharing?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I, my dad was always very reserved and, and as a result, he, he was supportive and he was, he was, he's a good guy, you know, but I never got to know him that well until late in his life. And he started opening up about World War II. The one story that blew my mind is that he, well, there was two. He said they were, they were rolling through the Black Forest and, and Hitler had surrendered, had surrendered. But there were still, it wasn't like all the Nazis said, we're not gonna be Nazis anymore.

• 9:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, war, war doesn't tend to end on a single day like it does in the movies.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Right. So they were, so they were, they had a bunch of troop carriers going through the Black Forest and Russian soldiers were, were, were coming out and, and turning themselves in because they, they chose to be captured by the Americans rather than be captured by the Germans.

• 10:03Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  And, but there were still snipers. My dad was sitting on a troop carrier, just, you know, just hanging out. All of a sudden you hear, and the guy next to him dropped off, off the troop carrier. So he was, you know, one guy away from, you know. So, but the thing was, what he told me is that they were instructed by their superior officers to not speak of what they were seeing in Germany. Because, you know, back, back home, everyone was like, yeah, USA, let's go, we're patriotic. The women are, you know, in a factory making bullets and, you know, whatever. But it wasn't a movie, as you say. It was, there were, it was horrifying what was going on over there.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  And they didn't want, my dad wasn't allowed to write a letter home that, to share his feelings about what was going on over there. So he became, I think, very, very closed off emotionally.

• 11:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, do you agree with me? I mean, I mean, because I grew up, you know, I'm a little bit younger than you, but I grew up, you know, with this kind of closed down war generation. A lot of drinking, a lot of kind of like, we don't talk about the war type of stuff. And I think the explosion of a lot of artistic voices in, in, in late sixties was because it was like, I, I can't live like this. This kind of, does that, does that resonate with your experience?

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Totally. You're, you're right on the money. I mean, I, you know, my generation, I mean, I was 12 years old when the Beatles came on the Ed Sullivan Show, you know, so. And then the liberation that was, it was boiling under, as you say, from, from, from all the repressed feelings, but the Beatles fricking blew the lid off.

• 11:50Billy Corgan?

  Did you see that one, that first time?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  I saw them.

• 11:52Billy Corgan?

  It's amazing how many artists they inspired, right? It's mind boggling. It's artists of every stripe.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:59Billy Corgan?

  Not just of, you know, rock and roll. I mean, people you would never imagine who went on to be very successful. Mom was a social worker?

• 12:06Speaker 01

  She was a social worker, yes. She was for, for Catholic charities, it was called. She, she was a caseworker. And, and to her credit, I mean, she was an amazing woman. She graduated from Mundelein University. So to be her age, female, and have a college degree, that was, that was some serious.

• 12:23Billy Corgan?

  Fairly unusual for the times.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  It really was. And so she would go into prospective adoptive homes unannounced to kind of, because everybody puts their best foot forward when they want to adopt a kid. But she was, she was a surprise attack person. So she would see what was really going on.

• 12:40Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I was struck by this, and correct me if it's wrong, but when you were about seven, they adopted, your parents adopted three kids.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:47Billy Corgan?

  That's a guy, even if you liked him, that had to be a big shift. What was the inner thinking for your parents to bring three kids into your home?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  You know, I think-

• 12:58Billy Corgan?

  Did they, did they, you do, did you get an explanation?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Well, I, I, the, the explanation I got was that, because normally, you know, your mother gets pregnant, if, and I, I, I was the first child, only child for seven years, apple of mom's eye, right? Normally you get a little preview of coming attraction-

• 13:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  And so there's something to talk about before the baby arrives. For me, it was just like, one day, my parents came in and told me that God, uh, had brought this baby to them, and that even though it didn't come out of mommy's tummy, I need to love it, this baby, the same as if it had, because that's what God wanted.

• 13:41Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  So, that's great. That, that's a nice explanation, very, uh, very clean and neat. But the problem was that inside, that, that didn't, that didn't coincide with what my feelings were. Cause my feelings were, do, do, do we swear on this show, or, or, or-

• 14:00Billy Corgan?

  You can say whatever you like, yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  I was, you know, I was like, I, I had this whole thing to myself, and now, here's this intruder coming into the, to the home, and everyone's making a fuss over her. It's like, I didn't, I didn't consciously think that.

• 14:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, he's seven years old.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Seven years old.

• 14:17Billy Corgan?

  It's hard to intellectually process that.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  But that's when, when I, when I, uh, and then they adopted three kids in a row over a five-year period.

• 14:24Billy Corgan?

  That's intense.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  And normally you couldn't do that. The only reason we could was because my mom was, was a, a caseworker and knew the, the head of it. But, um, it was, um, if, if I trace back my, maybe my artistic bent or whatever, I think that it kinda goes to there, because my feelings were, I, I wasn't allowed to feel what I was really feeling, because I was told what to feel.

• 14:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  And, and that's tough on a kid. And hey, a lot of weird happens to, to kids in, in the, in the, in the spectrum of things that can happen to you when you're a kid. This was pretty, I'm pretty lucky that that's what my problem was.

• 15:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, but still, it struck me as a very intense thing, you know.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:12Billy Corgan?

  You know, almost all artists, not all, but almost all that I've met seem to have some particular moment in their life that sort of shifts.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:22Billy Corgan?

  Puts them in a spot where they have to go inward to figure something out and that it becomes part of the faculty that they later discover to communicate.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Right. So if you wouldn't have, if you wouldn't have found the guitar, if the guitar wouldn't have found you, where do you think you would be right now?

• 15:37Billy Corgan?

  That's an interesting question. I had, I had a, I had a chance to have a career in academia because I was a good student. But it wasn't, I didn't feel passionate about it. I love learning, like even talking to you. I love doing the research and I love all that, but.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  I could see that in your music.

• 15:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, bless you. But, but, but, but a life in the arts is really, it's a, it's like a priest calling or something, you know, has a divine aspect, it has a non-divine aspect, but, but it, it's, it's an incredible responsibility, you know, to sort of say, hey, I'm going to try to sum something up that I feel and understand. And then hopefully, in, in your case, millions of people around the world sort of go, I understand what you're saying. It's so humbling and it's an intense experience. So, you know, the beauty of great teachers is that they, they, they can inspire people, but you know, we don't always see the fruits of their labors.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I, there was a, I had an English teacher. I went to Brother Rice High School in South Side, all-boys high school, crazy scene. If you weren't on the football team, you basically didn't exist, you know. And, and playing guitar was not exactly cool.

• 16:45Billy Corgan?

  That's where I was going to go. So, put those two together, like when you started playing guitar and getting into music.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I had been taking guitar. I wanted to play drums. My parents wanted me to play piano, so we settled on the guitar. And my dad, in his intimate way, said, guitar, you can take it with you anywhere you go. If you get invited to a party, you can bring your guitar. And I was like, I knew Elvis a little bit. He was a little old for me, but I knew he played the guitar and he was kind of, and the girls liked him. And so I was playing guitar, playing songs like Down in the Valley and Oh Susanna, you know, my little book and Yeah, yeah. learning chords. And then Beatles came out. And overnight, all the girls that liked the guys who used to chase me through the neighborhood to kick my ass because I was on my way to my guitar lesson, those same guys, of course, wanted to be in a band with me

• 17:35Speaker 01

  because I was the only kid in the neighborhood who played guitar. So the Beatles changed my life in so many ways. I suddenly, the guitar, the fact that I had been playing for a couple of years was cool. But check this out. So when the Beatles first came out, they were signed in England, but Capitol Records in the United States were like, That's right. who are these long haired guys? They came out of VJ. Chicago. Yeah. Bill Trout, who was my first manager. Oh, my goodness. Nickel Records, yeah. Wow. But, um, so it was kind of a mess there with VJ and Capitol and that's, and a lot of times that, you know, I would hang out at the music store where I took lessons and there was a rack with sheet music. And so, of course, I Want to Hold Your Hand came

• 18:20Speaker 01

  in, bought the sheet music immediately. It's hanging on my wall right now in a plexiglass case. But Please, Please Me came out. I saw the sheet music, but the record hadn't been played yet. Wow. So I grabbed the sheet music, snuck back into one of the lesson rooms and, you know, they had the chords and I knew some of the chords and I could kind of read music and the lyrics were there. And I figured out Please, Please Me. So, but, but a week later, and I was into it, about a week later, Please, Please Me came out on WLS and Dick Vianney? Yeah, probably. Larry Lujak. Gosh, those are names, right? Dick Vianney. God bless him. What was he called? The president in charge of looking out the window. But, uh,

• 19:05Speaker 01

  so Please, Please Me comes on. And I, I will beg your forgiveness for the, uh, for what I'm about to say, but I liked my version of Please, Please Me better.

• 19:17Billy Corgan?

  That's the proclivity of a songwriter. You knew what you were doing.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Well, no, what it is was that the Beatles inspire me because what I thought at that moment was, maybe I can write my own songs.

• 19:29Billy Corgan?

  Ah, okay.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  So I owe it all to them.

• 19:32Billy Corgan?

  How, how different was your version?

• 19:35Speaker 01

  You know, I wish.

• 19:36Billy Corgan?

  Please, please, please, like, last night.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  But, and the sheet music, I, I couldn't read that. I couldn't hear that.

• 19:46Billy Corgan?

  Was yours more ballady?

• 19:50Speaker 01

  You know, I, I, I, I don't know. I wish, I wish I had it. There was no.

• 19:55Billy Corgan?

  Don't you wish you had a recording of that somewhere?

• 19:57Speaker 01

  I was like 13, you know?

• 19:58Billy Corgan?

  So, uh, we don't have to belabor too much, but I, I, this jumped out to me. You had a, a teenish band. I guess this should be your prog rock phase, Fuchsia?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Fuchsia, yes.

• 20:11Billy Corgan?

  Covers, like, were you playing Cream or like?

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. We were playing Cream. We were playing Buffalo Springfield, a lot of Buffalo Springfield, Moby Grape.

• 20:19Billy Corgan?

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Are you familiar with that first Moby Grape album?

• 20:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Great band.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  The great band. They released every song on that record as a single simultaneously. You know, it was crazy. But, uh, and then, and then we, we sneak in the occasional original in between these kind of.

• 20:37Billy Corgan?

  So were you writing then?

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was writing some.

• 20:40Billy Corgan?

  What, what kind of, like, give me the vibe of the, I'll get it. If you just give me the vibe.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Kind of, kind of a Buffalo Springfield-y thing. I was very into Steven Stills. Crosby, Stills & Nash came out when I was.

• 20:53Billy Corgan?

  That was 67, 68, yeah.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Sixty, yeah. I was a junior, senior in high school and that, I bought that record. I was waiting for that record. I, I went, I used to, my band used to make demos on my TAC four track.

• 21:07Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  And I was convinced that the only machine that, that our music sounded good on was that exact, particular TAC four track. So I went down to a creative artists agency, which became CAA, but it was, they, they had an office in Chicago and somehow I, I figured out where it was and I called and they, they set up a meeting with me. So here I am. About sixteen, seventeen years old, I go walking into the CIA office, holding a giant TAC four-track tape machine. These guys must have looked at me like, this kid is out of his freaking mind. But on that four-track was a, on that demo, we played a song called Bluebird by Buffalo Springfield.

• 21:52Billy Corgan?

  Which Stills wrote.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Stills wrote. And, and this guy heard it, and he goes, I'm gonna give you an inside scoop. There's a band that's being formed right now with a guy from Buffalo Springfield, a guy from the Byrds, and a guy from the Hollies.

• 22:06Billy Corgan?

  He must have flipped out, yeah.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  And I'm like, those are my three favorite freaking bands ever. Yeah. Those first four Byrds albums. I mean, I had a Rickenbacker twelve, I had an ES335, my first real guitar. And I, when I heard Mr. Tambourine Man, dude.

• 22:21Billy Corgan?

  You traded it.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  I traded it for a Rickenbacker twelve, which I still have.

• 22:24Billy Corgan?

  And your 335 is probably worth more now than your Rick, yeah.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  I wish I had that. That's the only guitar that I've ever owned that I don't have still.

• 22:33Billy Corgan?

  It still hurts me, the ones I sold them.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:36Billy Corgan?

  I sold that one.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  But that was the vibe of my demos, yeah.

• 22:41Billy Corgan?

  So you were definitely attracted, like, let's call it the singer-songwriter-y.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:45Billy Corgan?

  I mean, that shows up in your music, so it, it makes sense to me.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Folk rock was, was kind of, you know, electric folk kind of thing.

• 22:52Billy Corgan?

  So, at this point, you're still, you know, mid to late teens, do you have professional ambitions? Are you, is you gonna make a life of this? What are your parents saying? Just give me that kind of read.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Well, our, our band decided that we were gonna join, uh, local 10208, the Chicago Musicians.

• 23:10Billy Corgan?

  Cause you had to be in the union back then. Cause my daddy played in Chicago, and it was the same thing. You don't have a union card, you can't play.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Can't play. So we went down there, we, we had a, I'll never forget, it cost a hundred and forty-eight dollars.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  It might have, must have been, it might have been a million.

• 23:25Billy Corgan?

  How much money have you made since, and you still remember, right? Me too, right? It's like, I, somebody will say, I saw you at this gig, and I'm like, I made sixty bucks at the gig. And it's like, thirty-four years later, they're like, how do you remember that? I'm like, trust me, you don't forget that stuff.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Yep. And.

• 23:40Billy Corgan?

  Sorry, I interrupted you.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, no.

• 23:41Billy Corgan?

  Hundred and forty-eight dollars.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred and forty-eight dollars, so Chicago Musicians Union, and I forgot the question. Why was I talking about the Chicago?

• 23:50Billy Corgan?

  I was just trying to get a sense on you, you know, are you going to your parents like, hey, I want to be a professional musician. This is what I'm going to do.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Right. You know, I, now, let me ask, let me ask you a question. Were you ever an altar boy?

• 24:03Billy Corgan?

  No.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:04Billy Corgan?

  I was raised Catholic, but I wasn't baptized.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Aha.

• 24:07Billy Corgan?

  So I was not allowed.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  So you're, sorry, buddy. No heaven for you.

• 24:12Billy Corgan?

  Swam here. I'm trying to redeem myself.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  But, yeah, so our, our band was, we were pretty good. And, or at least we thought we were. And, uh, and my, my parents were, uh, my mom was extremely supportive. She was a very, she was the kind of woman that would walk into this, this wonderful facility here and know everyone by name immediately, probably have sung a couple of Broadway show tunes to, to the, to whoever was paying attention. She was a, a big personality.

• 24:45Billy Corgan?

  Does she have a good voice?

• 24:46Speaker 01

  She had, she had a decent voice.

• 24:47Billy Corgan?

  Who had, who had the voice in your family? You must have got it from somebody.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  My dad's a, was always a choir singer.

• 24:53Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  You know, I, I don't, I consider myself a guy who luckily wrote some songs and, you know, with an acoustic guitar and singing. And as a result, I get to sing those songs. That's what as far as I, you know, I always think, like, Becca Bramlett sang one of my songs once on a demo that I had recorded.

• 25:18Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  And I don't know if you know Becca, but Becca's, uh, parents were Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett.

• 25:24Billy Corgan?

  When you said Bramlett, I, so I thought you were talking about.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Becca's their daughter and she is fantastic.

• 25:31Billy Corgan?

  You know what? In fact, somebody recently sent me a recording with Becca Bramlett singing. I said, I know exactly who you're talking about.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Yes. And she's

• 25:36Billy Corgan?

  Great voice.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Great voice, soulful. It's, oh, my God.

• 25:40Billy Corgan?

  Well, Bonnie Bramlett had an amazing voice.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And Becca's just, you know, beautiful tone and vibe and her energy is kind of her own worst enemy sometimes, but I loved her and I had her sing this song of mine and I went, oh.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  You know, because I would, and this was so dumb, and I finally figured it out. But I used to think that I put so much of myself and so much of my emotion into the writing the lyrics to my songs. And I slaved over them to try to mold them to, to, to express what I was feeling. But as I said earlier, to kind of shield myself a little bit in the, in the, in the process. But, uh, and I think that I thought to myself that I put so much emotion into that side of it, that I, all I had to do is go in the studio and try to be on pitch and on time.

• 26:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  And that was about it. I didn't think of the fact of, about, of an evocative vocal performance.

• 26:39Billy Corgan?

  Oh.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Just never really occurred to me.

• 26:41Billy Corgan?

  But I, but when I think of you as a singer, your voice is so expressive.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  You think so?

• 26:45Billy Corgan?

  I have, I think you, I think you have something that's super rare, which is an earnest quality. I believe what you're singing.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Huh. Well, I mean, it is mostly things that either I wrote or, uh, or Gary Richrath wrote.

• 26:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. But even when, because there's, I know you guys had one big song that Gary wrote. Um, and I, I just, I, I always feel you're an authentic voice.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Oh, well, thank you.

• 27:09Billy Corgan?

  Which I think is rare because, you know, rock is performative, you know? Not every heavy metal singer believes they're going to hell. You know what I mean? But there's an earnestness in your, in your musical life.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  I feel the same way about your singing.

• 27:21Billy Corgan?

  Oh, thank you.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  I really do.

• 27:22Billy Corgan?

  Well, I grew up with, you know, look, growing up in Chicago in the 1970s and listening to that radio, it provided a very high watermark when, when the bands that were successful from the Chicago area, yourselves, Styx, Cheap Trick. You know, it's, it's hard to explain to people who don't understand, but there was an earnest quality to Midwestern music. Baby was born of the system at the time where, and we, I want to talk about it, like how you guys would have to go on the road and kind of make your name in clubs.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:50Billy Corgan?

  Just because you had a record deal, that was just the beginning of the, of the hassle. You had to really go out and beat your brains out on, on those road circuits. And something about those albums really resonated with the, the working class ethos of the time. You know, there was no shame of being earnest and hardworking.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:08Billy Corgan?

  And and if it meant, you know, you put in a good week's work and and on Friday night, you're gonna go out and have a good time and still fall in love. It really resonated with the world that I grew up in. And what was crazy to me about that is I believed in that, like, uh, it was a simple fact, like, um, music that I grew up with, including yours, was like, there was no shame in being straightforward about what working people go through and what the dreams of, you know, Bruce Springsteen is probably the greatest American songwriter to encapsulate the working class ethos converted in aspiration. Yeah, I'm working on my car and I got the girl on the corner, but I still want to get out of here.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:45Billy Corgan?

  You know, there's something about that that's very, to me, it's Midwestern, but maybe it's just working class, but, uh, and there's the American, the Midwestern version. But what was strange to me is then when we first went to the coasts, we were made fun of for that.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  You guys were.

• 29:00Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah. You're too.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  We were, but I didn't realize.

• 29:02Billy Corgan?

  You're too into it. You're like, what do you mean? Hard work?

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 29:07Billy Corgan?

  Like, you were supposed to pretend that you didn't care, that you didn't want to be successful.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, kind of. I mean, that was.

• 29:16Billy Corgan?

  But it was weird. We were like, huh? Like, like, we love Chicago, but we want to get the [__] out of here. You know what I mean?

• 29:23Speaker 01

  And who doesn't want to be successful? I mean, if if you don't want to be successful, then

• 29:26Billy Corgan?

  Well.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  don't, then don't get a record deal and, you know.

• 29:29Billy Corgan?

  This is, this, this, this is my own harp, and I'm going to be quick about it because I really want to talk to you about your life. But, um, it's remarkable to me that most of the critical intelligentsia that I encountered in the late eighties, going into the nineties, into the two thousands, almost all of them were from upper middle class homes and had been to college. And I'm talking about names we recognize, not Munda Lion. You know what I mean? The point is, is they grew up in places where it's like you get to have those opinions. We didn't grow up in a world where you, we had the luxury of, you know, the first world complaint of, well, you're not wearing the right T-shirt. So the identity of the Midwestern bands, particularly in Chicago 70s going to the 80s,

• 30:13Billy Corgan?

  including also the great band Chicago, that is so dear to me. Even when I didn't like what you guys were doing musically, I understood where it came from. Because we went to those same, I didn't go to Catholic school, but I grew up, everybody around me was Catholic or went to this school and the nuns beat them over here. And we all shared that common experience of parents who'd been in the war. Dad or mom or grandpa broke their back in some factory. And if they were lucky, they got to retire. And of course, Bruce Springsteen kind of captured, let's call it the East Coast version of that. But the Chicago version was oftentimes overlooked because of the, the nature of the New York and LA media. Anyway, that's a long discourse to talk about your experience.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  But I, but I think that, I think that the Midwest bands also, to your point, had a tendency to, I mean, we were very, there was a lot of positive, like even the, the darkest song would have a, would have a happy ending. And I think that's very Midwest.

• 31:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. And so you gotta believe in something.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. So, but I think we also, not you, I think, I think your generation kind of blew the lid off, lid off of it to another degree. We kind of, like I say, kind of shielded ourselves a little bit. We, we told stories that we didn't, we didn't really let our guts out. You, you know, you let your guts out and that's, that's, that, that was kind of, to me, that was kind of rebellious against the Midwest thing, even though you were a Midwest guy.

• 31:47Billy Corgan?

  Thank you. It was, it was, at least for me personally, it was, I refused to accept the story.

• 31:54Billy Corgan?

  You know, because just like yourself, I sat at tables with people who'd been in the war. And you were told, don't bring it up. So you're standing there or sitting there watching somebody that you love, drink themselves to death. You know, they've been through something traumatic and you're a kid. So your version of it is what you saw in a John Wayne movie. There's a cognitive dissonance that went on there and it went on about abuse in the church. It went on there about child abuse in the home. It went on with people's secret drinking, drug use.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 32:26Billy Corgan?

  You know, we all grew up in the generation.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Homosexuality, I mean homosexuality was, when I was, when I was a kid, there was no such thing. They're just, it didn't exist. I mean outwardly, I mean, it was, it was clandestine. I feel so bad for these, these people.

• 32:40Billy Corgan?

  I look, I look back at people in my own family and of course, people in our orbit who were obviously now in hindsight, were obviously, uh, you know, uh, LGBTQ, whatever term you want to use. And nobody, but nobody would talk about it. And all you ever got was like a joke, like, oh, Sally's a tomboy or, you know, uh, Freddie Sir, Freddie Sirwalk's funny or, and, and, and now we look back in empathy and we realize they were probably really suffering. Because for people like us that were just, so let's call it dealing with our heightened emotions, grappling with, you know, post-war America, baby boomer world and all that type of stuff. I can't imagine what people in, in those circumstances went through. It must've been really, really difficult.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, cause they were still dealing with all that stuff and then.

• 33:26Billy Corgan?

  That's what I'm, you're picking up what I'm putting down. That's exactly what I'm saying. They were going through the same stuff we were going through and then they weren't even allowed to be themselves. It was bad enough, we couldn't be ourselves just being weirdos, right? Or sensitive, right? I'm sure you heard that one, why are you so sensitive?

• 33:42Speaker 01

  I still do, believe me.

• 33:44Billy Corgan?

  So, um, so just before we talk about you joining REO for the first time, just give me the, your kind of musical landscape. Are you down on Wells, playing gigs down there, Rush Street? Like what's your, what's your musical life like just before you joined REO?

• 34:01Speaker 01

  I, I was, I was on, I played the Earl of Old Town a few times, which was amazing for me. I was just a kid, but you know, John Prine had played there, Steve Goodman had played there, all the, uh, Bonnie Colah.

• 34:13Billy Corgan?

  And you, and you love those writers and those artists, right?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  I did.

• 34:15Billy Corgan?

  I think you had a soft spot, best I can tell.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  I did.

• 34:18Billy Corgan?

  And, and James Taylor by extension.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  James Taylor, Jackson Brown, Danny Fogelberg, Illinois boy.

• 34:24Billy Corgan?

  Great.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  That first album that he made, I mean, my alarm on my phone, ooh, I should probably turn my phone on. My alarm on my phone is to the morning, to the opening cut on Fogelberg's album. And I was down there when he made it in Nashville. But, um, so.

• 34:40Billy Corgan?

  Just the musical landscape you were in?

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was, you know, I played clubs kind of up on Lincoln Avenue. There used to be, the Orphans was an original music club. The Bulls was kind of a basement, more of a jazz club, but they had singer-songwriters. I played there every Sunday. I had a regular gig every Sunday, four sets a night. Do you know that, so I played four sets a night and I strummed, I always strummed pretty hard, but I used to use a medium pick back in those days. I had a Guild 12-string and I would always break at least one string. So between every set, I would totally change the strings on my 12-string.

• 35:25Billy Corgan?

  All of them?

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Which, yeah, which took the entire...

• 35:28Billy Corgan?

  I was gonna say, that's a 30-minute endeavor, at least.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  And then no tuner. So it's like...

• 35:33Billy Corgan?

  Oh my goodness.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, we didn't have tuners, so...

• 35:36Billy Corgan?

  That's true. I forget about that.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  You can imagine what I saw. I mean, it had to have been horrible. But I was, you know, I was doing my thing, but we had a little rock band, Fuchsia, and then we had a duo called The Late Late Show that did Simon and Garfunkel covers, acoustic versions of Buffalo Springfield and Moby Grape, and the occasional original. And, you know...

• 36:01Billy Corgan?

  Did you think you had a talent for songwriting?

• 36:05Speaker 01

  I don't know if I thought I did. I was writing songs and I was, I loved the, I loved songs. I just always loved songs. And, you know, and a good song is just, it's such a, if you're lucky enough to write one, it's just such a gift that you're offering to, you know? And for me, it was a way to connect with people.

• 36:33Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Songwriting was a way that, because I had... I didn't have much luck connecting like you and I, like, you know, just in real life. So songs were a way of sharing. And some, I think that was my motivation. I was looking for something.

• 36:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  You know, it wasn't going to be sports. I learned at a young age and, uh, but when I was about 13, I had a guitar teacher named Jim Nance and he had a, I'll never forget it, Gretsch Tennessee in an orange one with.

• 37:06Billy Corgan?

  Those are cool guitars.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Golden knobs and the leather pad on the back and.

• 37:11Billy Corgan?

  That's what Crosby played.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:13Billy Corgan?

  The Tennessean.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Did he play Tennessee? Yes, he did. You're right. Uh, and he was just my hero and, and he, uh, and one day he told me I had natural rhythm.

• 37:27Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  And I was like, cause my dad a couple of years earlier had told me that I wasn't a natural athlete, which was like, it, he didn't, he didn't, he wasn't trying to be mean, but to me at 11 years old, I was crushed by that. And then a few years later for my guitar teacher to say, natural rhythm. I'm like, well, I might not be a natural athlete, but I got natural rhythm. I've never forgotten that. And as a result, that's all I, all I play is rhythm guitar.

• 37:59Billy Corgan?

  So you get the call from Gary Rich Wrath and now you're in this band.

• 38:06Billy Corgan?

  Did you feel at home? Did you feel this is the break I've been waiting for? Like, just put me in the room. The first time you walk in and you're like, okay. Cause this is a band that's already running. This is not like a new band and you're hoping to have a dream. They're already in the dream.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:19Billy Corgan?

  And you're dropping in the middle of this thing.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, uh, it was interesting because Rich Wrath didn't tell anyone in the band what he was doing. None of the guys, Irving didn't know.

• 38:31Billy Corgan?

  Oh.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  No one knew.

• 38:32Billy Corgan?

  Oh, so you got that.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  So I got that going. And so, so, but I had Gary on my team.

• 38:37Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  And, and Irving loved Gary. I mean, you're yet, you had to have seen us, you know, back.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  At the, you know, in the heyday, Gary was just a, I mean, the first time I met him, he walks into my apartment, he's got a brown suede fringed jacket on, you know, this hair, this ringlet hair, he's chiseled, he's like this sinewy dude, he's got this hot chick on his arm, and I'm just like, I'm late for poetry class, you know what I mean? I'm like, I was just, the fact that he, he saw, he had to have seen something in me that I hadn't quite seen in myself yet, because I certainly, it wasn't like two equals meeting. He was definitely, you know, I definitely had a lot to learn when I met him, and he,

• 39:31Speaker 01

  he must have somehow sensed that. I mean, it's, I don't know. But, yeah, I was dropped in, Irving was not happy at all, because the first album sold over 200,000 copies. Irving's like, what are you doing? Why are you replacing the guy, you know? And Terry Luttrell, the original singer, was a good, he had a good bluesy, kind of a gravelly voice, and he didn't play an instrument, but he had the mic stand moves, and, you know, the cool hair, and, you know, but I guess he wasn't a writer. And, and, and the first album is all credited to, written by REO Speedwagon, but, you know, the, you know, the truth is, I think most of the songs, I think Gary came in with

• 40:16Speaker 01

  most of the songs, and then the band added, like, some prog rock, you know, side sections, but then it always came back to the, to the song song. So, but I didn't know that, you know, I thought REO Speedwagon was about prog rock, and, and just hard rock and riff type stuff, and so I wasn't sure what to expect, but, but then I, I would come to learn that Gary was

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Taught guitar by his uncle Leroy, who was a country guy. So Gary's Gary and in his soul was country. He just looked like Jim Morrison, you know.

• 40:47Billy Corgan?

  Listen, going back and listening to some of your guys' music for the first time in a hot minute, I was struck, there was more country influence there than I remembered.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:58Billy Corgan?

  Cause I always remembered as being a hard charging band that kind of had the ballad side. And it was like the two sides of REO. And it was, it'd been kind of in my mind as a kid, it had been hardened by all the road work. And hence the live albums did well in Chicago and stuff like that. So, but listening today, I was like, wow, there's a lot more country in here than I remember. I don't remember that influence at all. But when you say it, I'm like, oh, yeah.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. No, total country influence.

• 41:24Billy Corgan?

  So go please.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  No, no, go ahead.

• 41:26Billy Corgan?

  So you're dropped into this thing. And are you guys doing that thing where it's like you go out for three weeks and you're opening for so and so? And is it what are you doing that? I don't, I don't know. But they're in my mind, they call them package tours. But because I've talked to like Geddy Lee from Rush, you know, it'd be like they would get a call. They would go to sit in a town for somewhere and sit for a week and they'd be at a holiday and they get a call. Okay, now you're going on tour with Boil Oyster Cult and so and so, and you just jump in the next thing you know, you're on a tour for three weeks and that tour ends.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:53Billy Corgan?

  So you're doing that thing?

• 41:54Speaker 01

  That's how it was. I mean, there were, there were regional bands and we all knew who each other was, you know, Midwest was us, you know, Texas was easy talk.

• 42:03Billy Corgan?

  Give me some, can you give some of the bands that you're sort of in that, in that loop?

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. Leonard Skinner down in, you know, the southeast. But bands would come through the Midwest on a tour.

• 42:15Billy Corgan?

  You guys would be picked, picked, oh, okay.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  And they dump us on the tour to open for, you know, Grand Funk Railroad. We, our first real tour was Black Oak, Arkansas.

• 42:26Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  And they were, they were amazing. I mean, Jim Dandy. Yeah, Jim Dandy kind of took me under his wing and he was like my, you know, kind of my father figure and Tommy Aldridge on drums.

• 42:38Billy Corgan?

  Amazing drummer.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  I just, every night of that tour, I sat behind with Little David, who was his, his drum tech, giant guy. And, and I would watch Tommy Aldridge from, I'd watch Black Oak from behind.

• 42:51Billy Corgan?

  From behind.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Tommy had, was, you know, trolling his sticks, you know, double bass drum. I mean, he was. Unbelievable.

• 42:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, one of the hardest hitters probably in the history of rock.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  And of course Jim Dandy was, you know, David Lee Roth when David Lee Roth was in high school, you know. But, uh, so I learned, I, I, I just soaked it all up, man. I soaked it all up.

• 43:11Billy Corgan?

  That's fantastic.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Every band we played with, you know.

• 43:14Billy Corgan?

  So, uh, cause there's so much to cover. I hate to skip past things, but, but, you know, unfortunately this part of your life ends poorly because you end up getting fired by the band. Can you just kind of walk me?

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, you know, some people would say I was fired. Other people would say that we had create, that creative differences arose.

• 43:31Billy Corgan?

  Okay, you tell me, cause you, you were in the room.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  I was fired. Though what happened is I.

• 43:38Billy Corgan?

  Well, they made a big mistake. Let's start there. Cause they, they needed you and that's, we'll get to that too.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it, it wasn't, it, it wasn't, there was nothing malicious about it. I just, I had never sung so long and so loud and so hard. And there was no in-ear monitors. It was wedges. And, and normally the tours we went on, unfortunately the headline acts wouldn't let you use the wedges.

• 44:02Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Cause they wanted you to sound bad to, to make them sound better. And so I just blew my, I blew my voice out. And I, I went to a doctor in Champaign, Illinois, and he said, I should, uh, not sing for six weeks and not talk for three weeks. And meanwhile, we're rehearsing for the third album. And I'm like, oh, and plus I'm the new guy. I've only been in the band for about a year. So in typical Irish Catholic Midwest fashion, I keep all, keep it all to myself. And I'm trying to like not talk very much and not sing at rehearsals and only sing for the gigs.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  I'm thinking every note I don't sing now is a song I'll, is a note I'll be able to sing in the studio. It was, it was crazy time in my head. And, and what they thought is that I was just being an asshole. That, you know, they thought I was being the cocky lead singer. Didn't want to sing, didn't want to hang out. So eventually it just came to a head and but but I never told them what

• 45:08Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  I never told them what what happened. Later I did, of course. But, you know, I was like, I think if I just would have been out with it, you know, I mean, I ended up getting fired anyway. So, you know, at least I would, but I didn't know yet that you're supposed to express your feelings.

• 45:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, not not having been in a room with you singing. I mean, because, you know, sometimes the microphone is deceiving, but I mean, I always got the feeling you sang very loud.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  I think I did. I think I I did.

• 45:38Billy Corgan?

  And I think of your bigger rock songs. I mean, it sounds like you're really.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:42Billy Corgan?

  It's not straining. It's a, you know what I'm saying? It's a.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  That's all I knew.

• 45:45Billy Corgan?

  There's a, but there's a power, you sang powerfully.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Well.

• 45:49Billy Corgan?

  So they did. I can imagine because if you didn't have particular training, because I went through the same thing. It's like you start blowing your voice out.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:55Billy Corgan?

  And you know how bands are. They're they're they're off chasing whatever they're chasing. They don't care that you you can't talk.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:01Billy Corgan?

  Much as sing.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:03Billy Corgan?

  You know, they look at you like you're weak and you're like, I got a squeak coming out.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. I just, within the past, going on five years now, I I started working with a vocal coach, changed my life.

• 46:18Billy Corgan?

  Ah, interesting.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  We can talk off off camera, but.

• 46:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  He's a local guy, Jeffrey Allen, who was a professor at USC, who was my son's vocal. My son went to the vocal, the pop vocal program at at SC and just, that's a whole other story. But, but.

• 46:36Billy Corgan?

  Has your son got the pipes too?

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Billy, I should be so lucky to be able to sing. I mean, he has his mother's good looks. My father.

• 46:45Billy Corgan?

  Well, you married well, yeah.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did. I married up for sure. My father's blue eyes and his voice is. It's it's got a quality that's just so unique. It's like, you know how Sting's voice, it's it's just, it's just unique, but totally on pitch, totally, you know, and, you know, Shane has got that.

• 47:04Billy Corgan?

  How old's your son?

• 47:05Speaker 01

  He's 26.

• 47:06Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he's, uh, he's working on it. Yeah.

• 47:09Billy Corgan?

  Um, I had this note here. Where is it? Oh, I was struck and I know, I know you've been fired from the band, but there was a song on that album that you did with them where you say, and I think pretty sure it's your song, Can't You See I'll Always Be a Music Man?

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Aha.

• 47:24Billy Corgan?

  And I thought, well, that's fairly prophetic.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  You know, that actually was the song that I played for Rich Raff in my apartment.

• 47:31Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  I played two songs, Holiday Inn by Elton John and Music Man, which I had literally just written. And it was the most kind of rock and roll song I'd ever, I'd ever kind of done. It was actually my first kind of, I consider it my first real song.

• 47:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I get that.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  You know, three verses, you know, all telling a story and, yeah, I guess it was, it was prophetic.

• 47:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  And it was actually, it was, there was a little manifestation in there too, because in the, I was just singing it the other day and the third verse, I actually sing as if I'd already attained some sort of, of fame, even though I hadn't. So, I was, I'm on the top of the mountain, I'm looking down now. Exactly.

• 48:20Billy Corgan?

  That's beautiful. Um, so, uh, it doesn't give anything away, but you're, you're out of the band for four years. That's my understanding.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, more like three, I think about.

• 48:32Billy Corgan?

  So that's a long time to kind of, you come off the adrenaline of a tour, you know, you're hanging out with, you know, uh, Jim Dandy.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:40Billy Corgan?

  You know?

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Mark Carter. I mean, come on.

• 48:43Billy Corgan?

  Amazing.

• 48:45Billy Corgan?

  Right, so okay, now you're back in Chicago, you're back on Wells Street or wherever you are.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:50Billy Corgan?

  Now, what's the plan? Is there a plan?

• 48:52Speaker 01

  The plan was, I was gonna come home.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  My, my first producer was the guy who sang lead on Ben Me Shake Me, a guy named Gary Loiseau.

• 49:02Billy Corgan?

  Ah, American Dream.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Familiar with Gary at all?

• 49:04Billy Corgan?

  No, I don't know him, but...

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, he went on to produce Styx and be Styx's house sound man. Studio called Pumpkin Studios down on the South Side.

• 49:13Billy Corgan?

  What? I never heard of Pumpkin Studios.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Ah, he was an, Gary was an amazing singer.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  But I came home, I contacted Gary, Bill Trout from Nickel Records, VJ originally. And another, another Gary, Gary Zulo, who worked for Triangle Productions, the original concert promoter in Chicago. And the plan was, I was gonna get a solo record deal.

• 49:37Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  And, long story short, it never happened.

• 49:42Billy Corgan?

  Were, were people not interested in you, or what was the sort of general vibe?

• 49:45Speaker 01

  It just, it just, it wasn't right. And, and, and looking back, it wasn't right. I, I understand why that didn't happen. I, I wasn't ready for it.

• 49:56Billy Corgan?

  If, if, if life had turned out differently, which it didn't, what in your mind would have been the, you turn into James Taylor, you know, Dan Fogelberg, like, who are you? Who, it's just, because it's always interesting to me, because you went on to so much success with the band, but, like, the kind of the what could have been version. So, at that point in your life, what would have been the, like, success in your mind?

• 50:18Speaker 01

  I mean, my band would have sounded a lot more like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

• 50:23Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Than, than...

• 50:24Billy Corgan?

  Almost more American, Americana?

• 50:26Speaker 01

  More jangly, you know?

• 50:28Billy Corgan?

  Like Post-Birds?

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, 12, you know, Rickenbacker 12, Vocal Harmonies. I, I was never the lead singer in any of my younger bands. I was always part of a, of a harmony, of a trio of guys that sang. And we, you know, each guy would sing lead on, on a few songs, but the, the, the big part was the three-part.

• 50:47Billy Corgan?

  But what's funny about that is, by about 77, 76 maybe even, Power Pop.

• 50:54Billy Corgan?

  Which Cheap Trick became associated with kind of so that if you'd actually gone down that lane, you might have had success in that because it actually became a thing and particularly in the Midwest.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, true. I mean Cheap Trick, I mean, I heard Cheap Trick and you're.

• 51:06Billy Corgan?

  You must have heard it like seventy five, seventy six, somewhere around there, right?

• 51:09Speaker 01

  We, we, we didn't, we've done more, more shows over the years with Cheap Trick. Maybe, maybe Sticks and Cheap Trick are tied, but, uh.

• 51:17Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  But, but I love those guys and.

• 51:19Billy Corgan?

  Uh, you know, I've, I've, I've known those guys fairly well through the years and I'm out of, out of them, I'm closest with Rick and, and I've been to Rick's house in Rockford a few times and it's like, as you know, because you know Rick, uh, it's like you're in Rick's house and you're like, wow, does he ever turn it off? I'm like, you're like this at home? Like you go to, go to Rick's wife is like, does he ever turn it off? She's like, no, he's Rick Nielsen 24 hours a day. Wow.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's funny because Dave Amato, who plays, who joined Ariel, been with us for thirty five years, he, he was Gary, he, he took over for Gary, he, he, he played with Ted Nugent for five years.

• 51:58Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  And.

• 52:00Billy Corgan?

  That's probably where I know his name, yeah.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so Dave was kind of the Derek St. Holmes replacement. And he tells a story about how he, he lived with Ted when he first joined the band. And he said, when he was alone with Ted, they'd wake up in the morning, go down to the kitchen, Ted had fresh eggs, you know, they'd make eggs, they'd cook breakfast, just, just talking about whatever, you know, and, and it was just normal. Dave said, when one person, one other person entered the room, all bets were off. Ted turned into terrible Ted, the Motor City madman, you know, at home, but if that person

• 52:41Speaker 01

  left, so it was, basically if you were one on one with him, Ted kind of dropped the facade.

• 52:47Billy Corgan?

  Interesting.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  But the minute there were two people, now, now it's an audience.

• 52:51Billy Corgan?

  I love that. Um.

• 52:54Billy Corgan?

  So when Gary, I could say, I can never say, you know, the kids, we call him Rick Rath.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, Rich Rath.

• 52:59Billy Corgan?

  Rich Rath, sorry.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:01Billy Corgan?

  Rich Rath. He calls you, hey, come back. What's your first reaction? You must be thinking, ah.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  I remember what I said. My response was, it's about time you called.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Because by that time.

• 53:16Billy Corgan?

  That's amazing.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  But by that time, Arielle had made a couple albums with Mike Murphy singing.

• 53:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Murph, extremely talented dude.

• 53:24Billy Corgan?

  But he was more of like a singer songwriter guy, right?

• 53:26Speaker 01

  He was more of a blue eyed soul guy.

• 53:28Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  He was all about R and B and he played great piano, great guitar, sang, had a really unique voice.

• 53:35Billy Corgan?

  Good looking guy too, right?

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess, yeah. But.

• 53:38Billy Corgan?

  Maybe not your type.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  But he was, he was Irving's, Irving had Gary and Irving's partner down in Champagne had Murph.

• 53:47Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  So when, when I joined the band, the expectation was, I think the word was out that Arielle was maybe going to make a change at lead singer. But the expectation was it was going to be Murphy. Rich Rath came and found me. And so when I left, Murphy was the obvious replacement. So, so they made a couple of albums with Murph and it, it never really gelled musically. Murphy's, you know, like I say, extremely gifted, but you know, Gary's more country. Murph was more R and B and it just never felt, it never felt, never felt right to me.

• 54:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  You know, so.

• 54:26Billy Corgan?

  Because you don't strike me as a bitter person, but did, what did you think of their musical output in the time that you were gone?

• 54:32Speaker 01

  And there was no bitterness about it. I knew that, that I cooked my own goose as far as that was concerned.

• 54:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  I didn't, I didn't hold it against them for firing me. But I, I wasn't a huge fan of those records. There was one song called Lost in a Dream that Murphy wrote with Bruce Hall, who ended up joining Arielle. That was, I really dug that song. And that was the title song of the middle album that they made, Lost in a Dream. But the next album.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  You know, I listened to it, of course. I was curious. And, and I was also, I, I went through a pretty dark period when my solo career didn't take off. And that lasted for, you know, a good nine months of kind of isolation. Had an apartment up on Marine Drive in Chicago. Little studio place that wasn't really seeing too many people. I'd stopped going down to the Wooden Nickel office because what am I doing down there? But I met a, I met a few people and I, I finally started playing again. I started going back to the, to the clubs, playing solo. And I had a new kind of

• 55:49Speaker 01

  energy or something. Something was different. My, my voice was, I'd healed my voice. And I was just, and I started writing again. I wrote a song called Keep Pushin'. I was walking down the street in downtown Chicago and it just came to me, the cadence I was walking with. And that song was kind of like, I made a demo of it. Made a demo with it with some great Chicago players, but I thought, I could hear REO doing this song.

• 56:16Billy Corgan?

  Interesting.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that demo got back to the band somehow. Because Irving's partner is a guy named John Barrick, who was always, I was always closest to him in the, with the management. So I think I must have sent that demo to John. I think John got it to the band and they were, you know, they made-

• 56:36Billy Corgan?

  They were smart to do that.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  They, they liked what they heard and, and it, that was the song I think that got me the game back. Keep Pushin'.

• 56:47Billy Corgan?

  The album that you were on before you got fired, two, REO two. You know, you certainly hear the successful, it's almost like, it's hard to put it this way, but let's call it the successful REO rock. Architecture with you singing, like I can hear that then. But then when you come back and it's keep on pushing, it's like that's the band that I heard growing up.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:12Billy Corgan?

  Like it's like all of a sudden, it's just all snaps into place. Could you feel that?

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it was, it was a big change and I think for, I think the biggest thing for me was I was, I wasn't the new guy anymore. I, I knew that, that if I, if I, cause, cause they flew me out to LA that, cause that's where they were living. And, and I knew that the only way it was gonna work is if I was, if I were treated as an equal.

• 57:37Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Cause I never was.

• 57:38Billy Corgan?

  Did you negotiate anything coming? I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 57:42Billy Corgan?

  Just I'm back and let's just move on.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was, it was in the back of my mind that I wasn't gonna be.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  When I first tried the band, Rich Rath would have his microphone right downstage at, at the far lip of the stage, but my microphone couldn't be that far up. So I'd be singing lead.

• 58:00Billy Corgan?

  I love, I love how bands somehow. The bands are the weirdest. If people really knew how bands really are.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Do you know that back in those days, Gary, every night after the show, he would, he would, the audience would leave and of course the, the ground is littered with beer bottles and.

• 58:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Trash and stuff. Gary would come around the front of the stage and that was back in the day of flash cubes. Every, every camera had a little, a flash cube with.

• 58:29Billy Corgan?

  It would rotate after you.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Rotate and after your fourth picture, you took it out and discarded it. He would come and look at the front of the stage at each mic position, cause he wanted to make sure that there were the most flash cubes in front of him.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  And, and he, and they're always.

• 58:47Billy Corgan?

  That's a new one. I, I heard them all, but that's a new one.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  And there always were and I knew it, but I was determined that I was gonna, you know.

• 58:56Billy Corgan?

  You showed him.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Uh, no, no, I, I, it's not that I showed him. It's a.

• 59:00Billy Corgan?

  I know, I'm just being silly, but.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  But you know what I'm saying? All I, I didn't wanna, I didn't wanna be more than him, cause I knew that I wasn't. I just wanted to be equal with him.

• 59:09Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  And, and I think, um, when he heard keep pushing, I think that was a signal to him that I had kind of arrived at a new place.

• 59:18Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  And, uh, and I think he respected it. He liked that song and, uh, and, and that was the beginning of, you know, you know, bands have an arc. And.

• 59:29Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  And, you know, and Gary and I. Our arc, our arcs

• 59:36Speaker 01

  kind of met right, right after this period that we're talking about now.

• 59:40Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. I love this quote and tell me if it's not accurate because sometimes I tell people quotes that I find like I didn't say that.

• 59:49Billy Corgan?

  We play for free, but we get paid for traveling.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  You know, that, that was actually, I can't take credit for that. That was our keyboard player, Neil Doughty, but, but I've.

• 59:58Billy Corgan?

  It's certainly true.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  I've adapted it and I've used it for sure.

• 1:00:04Billy Corgan?

  Had anything shifted in the culture because, you know, this is, and this is where the story gets really easy to tell. This is where you guys start to really take off. But did you feel that internally? Well, I mean, could you see it coming? Does it make sense? Did you, did you start to see more people that something clicked this way?

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  We, we kind of felt like, like when I came out to LA and we, we rehearsed for the first time. Every, we started with Keep Pushin' and then we started playing some of the songs off REOTWO, the song, album I was on. And they, they sounded different. They sounded better. They started, the band sounded tighter. I was singing with more confidence. I think I felt more confident. And I think that, that, that, that equality of spirit kind of just manifested itself there.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  And, and we felt like we, like, I don't know, we just, I don't know. It wasn't anything outside the band. It was inside the band.

• 1:01:09Billy Corgan?

  Understand what you're saying.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and, but, but the one thing we, we knew we needed was up until then, Epic had chosen the producer. And, and the producer were, were always like highly pedigreed guys. Bill Halverson from Crosby, Stills and Nicks.

• 1:01:26Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  You know, uh, you know. Simzik, Bill Simzik.

• 1:01:31Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Eagles. I mean, you know, like.

• 1:01:34Billy Corgan?

  Huge resume, yeah.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Big, big names, but for whatever reason, it just never quite, just never quite worked with us. Maybe, maybe we were a little slower than these guys wanted. I don't know what it was, but we just, Gary and I made up our minds that, that we were going to produce the album.

• 1:01:51Billy Corgan?

  Interesting.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  And, and because, because we just figured, nobody knew, nobody knows this band better than us. And every producer we had, we would go in with songs and then we, but by the time the album was, was done, it was like, that's not what we want the song to sound like, you know?

• 1:02:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Was there a pushback from the label on that?

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Uh, well, there, by the time we finally got to that point, um, it was, it was a lot, it was a live album. Peter Frampton had come up with his live album and suddenly.

• 1:02:22Billy Corgan?

  You love the music business. It's like, you got, now you gotta do a live album.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, no, the, the live album was always just like an excuse, what you, like a, a, a, a time, a bookmark. It the whole time, while you finish writing some songs, but suddenly Peter Frampton is on top of the world.

• 1:02:39Billy Corgan?

  Twenty, he sold 20 million albums or whatever the heck.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  Same songs that no one heard on his studio albums, the live bands, people liked. So that's, so we kinda, they kinda paved the way for us. So, but we, uh, but Gary produced that one. I, I, I wasn't a producer on that, but I kinda was, but I, I.

• 1:02:57Billy Corgan?

  You're talking about the Live Rec?

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  The Live Rec.

• 1:02:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  And I, I didn't, I didn't get billing as a producer and I was fine with that, but I realized that I kinda was being a co-producer. And, and so the next album.

• 1:03:10Billy Corgan?

  I want to talk about the live album because that's, that's, that's where I really have strong memories. They played, you guys at that point in Chicago, like, I felt like I heard you every hour for a long time.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  I mean, that was the first album that got played in Chicago.

• 1:03:26Billy Corgan?

  Okay. I didn't say I don't, didn't know that.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  We were much more popular in St. Louis, Indianapolis.

• 1:03:32Billy Corgan?

  Was there a reason that Chicago stations were resistant to play a hometown band?

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  Well, we weren't a hometown band. See, we were, we were a downstate band.

• 1:03:40Billy Corgan?

  I know, but that's so silly to me.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  But, but there was a distinction.

• 1:03:43Billy Corgan?

  Cause even, I, I, I'm going to say this because even when Cheap Trick got popular, it was like, well, they're from, they're from Rockford.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  Rockford.

• 1:03:48Billy Corgan?

  Which is like 60 miles away.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  I know. But Chicago was pretty.

• 1:03:52Billy Corgan?

  Think about that here. We're in Los Angeles. It'd be like saying you're from the inland empire, not from Los Angeles. That's how silly that is. But it was, that was how it was.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  There was a little, Chicago, you know, saw itself as a little, a little nacho box.

• 1:04:07Billy Corgan?

  Even some, at some point I referred to Styx as a, as a, as a Chicago band. And somebody goes, no, they're from Dalton. It's like 20 miles away from Chicago, Dalton. I was like.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  I call, I call Styx as Chicago.

• 1:04:21Billy Corgan?

  But I'm saying it's like, no, no, they're from Dalton. Like, who the fuck cares? They're from Dalton. It's like, it's a suburb. It's like such a strange thing.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  No, dude, we, when, when I was a kid, when I was in high school, our band, Fusion, got involved in a battle of bands at Brother Rice High School, my high school. And the band that we, we thought, we got this in the bag, because only one band got paid at the battle of bands. Then we heard who our, who our opponents were, and they were from about 10 miles east of Brother Rice. South side, near the lake, kind of a little rougher area. They were called the TW4.

• 1:04:58Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  And I heard that they had a keyboard player, lead singer, who was pretty talented, pretty cocky. And so they came into my high school and we, we either heard the rumor or started the rumor that their girlfriends, who are a little older, they were a couple of years old, a little hotter, went up to the guys and, and talked them out of their ticket stub, which was the ballot. And these girls, as I have been known to say, stuffed more than their bras. Because, because we lost the battle of bands. And it turned out that that was Dennis DeYoung and the Penazzo Brothers and John Curly. They were called the TW4.

• 1:05:36Billy Corgan?

  Amazing.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  And so we go back a long way with them. So I know where they're from. They're, they're, they're from 10 miles down 95th Street, baby.

• 1:05:46Billy Corgan?

  I love it. So, uh, uh, am I wrong in remembering that "Riding the Storm Out" was sort of the breakout song from that live record?

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  Yes, it was. And.

• 1:05:56Billy Corgan?

  And, and again, correct me, but you had not sung the original, right?

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Well, I sang the original in the, I, I, all my vocals are on the third album. In fact, my picture was on the album cover.

• 1:06:08Billy Corgan?

  Are there tapes of you singing "Riding the Storm Out" from the third album sessions?

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  I think there probably are.

• 1:06:13Billy Corgan?

  Have they ever come out?

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  I, I.

• 1:06:16Billy Corgan?

  That's an inch. I gotta, I gotta dig around on that.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  I don't think they ever.

• 1:06:20Billy Corgan?

  Cause I, cause I was looking, I was like, cause I, my memory is of course you singing riding the storm out. So when I went to look in the albums, I was like, well, he's out of the band here. So I was so surprised by that. So I thought you were maybe singing somebody else's song.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, they, they released it with Murphy singing lead and it, it did okay.

• 1:06:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  But the version on the live album, the live album was my savior because up until then, there had been three different lead singers in the band. So we'd be, you know, pulling into town to play a gig. We had the local rock station on and I would hear the, the radio spot for the concert and it would be riding the storm out with the wrong guy singing.

• 1:06:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  And it was so deflating. It would be like, I, please, everyone in this town is hearing that, that version. Now I gotta go, it was hard enough as it was, but when the live album came out, that now my voice was on all their best songs. Cause it was kind of a best of of album cuts, you know? So that was, that was the album that really, uh, that helped me out big time.

• 1:07:21Billy Corgan?

  So if you don't mind indulging me for a second, I have a beautiful memory.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:07:24Billy Corgan?

  Uh, my step grandparents lived in Schaumburg and I was out riding my bike one day and I had a boombox in the, like the basket of the bike. And it was one of those Chicago days where a storm was coming in. You know, you could see, you know, about 10 miles out, here comes the storm. The winds are picking up and I'm listening to the radio and the guy goes, you better get home or something like that. And he plays riding the storm out and you do the introduction, you know, riding the storm out people or whatever you say at the beginning. And I had this incredible memory of listening to you sing as I'm trying to race the actual storm that's catching up to me on my bike.

• 1:08:05Billy Corgan?

  And it's like somebody got a wizard out. The, you know, the winds are coming up. It starts to drizzle a little bit and you're singing and I, I timed it where I got home exactly at the end of the song. I can't make this up. And I'm sitting with you. So it's a fantastic memory.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 1:08:19Billy Corgan?

  You're forever in my heart because it's like, I remember that, that moment like it was yesterday.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  I love that. And you know, it's so weird and I'm sure you've, you have experienced this. I have songs and that, that have, that represent a certain moment to me, but to hear that someone else.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  Has one of my songs that that's that moment for them. It's it. It kind of blows my mind a little bit. It's like the ultimate.

• 1:08:43Billy Corgan?

  It's I think I started. It's like for me, it's the ultimate compliment.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  It is the ultimate compliment. That's all I was about to say.

• 1:08:48Billy Corgan?

  It's like, wow, so cool, right? So there I was in Schaumburg, listening to you. Whatever that year was. So um. So, yeah, so in Chicago, and I didn't know that you guys had that was your first kind of breakthrough. I just remember in Chicago was just like, like they, when they got on you guys, they went hard. And you guys just went like this. Straight up.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, we played Soldier Field that year.

• 1:09:10Billy Corgan?

  Wow. And. Did you headline that?

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  We I think we were second on the bill.

• 1:09:14Billy Corgan?

  Who was the headliner? I know you know.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Bob Seeger.

• 1:09:17Billy Corgan?

  Wow, OK, not bad.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  He was ahead of us. He was a little ahead of us for sure.

• 1:09:24Billy Corgan?

  So the breakthrough moment comes with the next album. Can't tune a fish, but you can tune a piano is a.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  You can tune a piano, but you can't tune.

• 1:09:30Billy Corgan?

  Sorry, yeah, which Pitchfork named one of the worst album covers ever. I saw that.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Did they really? Well, that's that's interesting.

• 1:09:37Billy Corgan?

  You know, it's like I'm digging around. I've had my battles with Pitchfork, you know? And I thought it's like, who does a who does a list of the worst album covers of all time? Because we, you know, Chicago, we thought it was funny. Because it's the fish and the.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  And and there was no Photoshop back in those days. So we, our crew.

• 1:09:54Billy Corgan?

  You had the fish.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Went down to Long Beach Harbor, picked out the fish, drove it out to Joshua Tree. We were out there on that little lake, freezing our asses off. Held the fish up, stuck the tuning fork in, got the right angle of us. I mean, it was. There was a lot that went into that album cover.

• 1:10:12Billy Corgan?

  OK, because this is where you start to come in heavy. Roll with the Changes.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:17Billy Corgan?

  Great song. Time for me to fly.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:10:22Billy Corgan?

  Time for me to fly is where sort of like, let's call it the the the true appearance of like, you know, the the ballad side of the band. Is that fair? I'm not saying you guys didn't play ballads, but that's like that becomes the REO signature ballad. Like the beginning of that, that run. Was that you asserting more presence in the in the song picking and the because it seems to me that's where it starts to become more and more your band is that a fair way to put it?

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  I would say that's where Gary

• 1:10:49Billy Corgan?

  That's not to take away anything from Gary.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:51Billy Corgan?

  You know, but at some point you you search yourself maybe or something.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  I was, you know, those songs, both those three songs you mentioned were definite definite confidence builders for me. Time for me to fly, I brought in on the album with Keep Pushin' and the producer, of course, turned it down because it because it only had three chords.

• 1:11:13Billy Corgan?

  What?

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  I'm like, who cares how many chords is that?

• 1:11:17Billy Corgan?

  Have you listened to the Beatles?

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. If you heard Tom Petty, but um, so that was part of why I wanted to be part of the production team because I didn't want any producer to take, I had all the changes in Time for me to fly, I'm like, please don't give these to a producer who's gonna perhaps potentially ruin them or spoil them. And so when Gary and I went to New York, we went into the to the president of the label and we're like

• 1:11:47Billy Corgan?

  Who was the president at the time?

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  Ronald Luxenberg at the time at Epic. And and there was a guy sitting in the back of the office. So we walk in and we're talking to Luxenberg.

• 1:11:56Billy Corgan?

  There's the guy.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and here's the guy sitting back there. We didn't know who he was. And we're like, you know, if we don't produce this album, we're not going to record, you know, this is work, this is us coming in, you know. And Luxenberg looks at us, he goes, it's fine if you guys produce the album, I just asked one thing. And we're like, first of all, we, he goes, he goes, see that guy back there reading the book? I would, it'd make me feel more comfortable if he were in the control room with you as you're as you're co-producing the album. He, his name is John Boylan, he just produced the the Boston album, the debut album for Boston.

• 1:12:35Billy Corgan?

  The one that went 14 million copies or whatever. Great, great sound, too.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  Yes, it was, that was the Rockman sound, the Tom Schultz sound, but and the engineer's got named Paul Grubb, passed away recently, I loved Paul, but we're like, sure, John Boylan. And so he, so John came in and I loved it because it gave Gary and I the total freedom to To mold the music and to, you know, to choose what we were gonna do. And John was sitting back there and if we ever had a question or if we ever had a, you know, ran into a, you know, a blind canyon, we could always ask him and he was always there. And about a month into the album, I was listening to some playbacks and I'm like, this is not right. It's not right.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  We need to, we need to go back into rehearsal.

• 1:13:25Billy Corgan?

  Do you remember what was not right about it?

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  I don't remember what was not right about it, but it just wasn't feeling right.

• 1:13:30Billy Corgan?

  You just know, yeah.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  You just know. So I went to John Boylan. I took him aside and we had become friendly over the past month. And I said, John, how crazy would it be if I asked you if we could start this, if we could leave the studio, we were at Sound City, leave the studio, come, go back in rehearsal, come back and start over again. And he looked at me and he said, do it. And that, I mean, you have no idea how that, how good that made me feel because I was afraid to say that, you know, to anybody. But, but when I had his imprimatur on it, I was like, okay, he must have been hearing the same thing. So we went out, went back in rehearsal for about three and a half weeks

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  and worked on the arrangements and we, we sit up in Gary's living room. He was the only one who had a big enough house that we could, and we turned his house into our clubhouse. And we just got into it. And, you know, there were people there and it was, there was parties going on. It was a whole kind of a, almost like a communal atmosphere. We worked up the songs. We started from scratch, came back to Sound City and, and got into it. And yeah, it's pretty, pretty, it's fun to think back to those times. Because you take them for granted when you're going through them. But when you ask me the question, I go, oh, yeah.

• 1:14:48Billy Corgan?

  No, it's, it's, I certainly think times where it's magical, but you don't know it's magic.

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:54Billy Corgan?

  Because you're just so like tunnel vision.

• 1:14:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:59Billy Corgan?

  Have you reached a point in your musical journey where you're like, okay, I'm living the rock and roll dream. This is working.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  Yes, totally, totally. We, at one point, Led Zeppelin had had an old airplane that they used. The Doobies had the Doobie liner and we thought.

• 1:15:16Billy Corgan?

  The Doobie liner.

• 1:15:17Speaker 01

  The Doobie liner. So we thought, we're on the road all the time.

• 1:15:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  We need an airplane. So, so Irving's like, okay, I'll find you an airplane. So we show up at Santa Monica Airport. Here's, here's this tail dragger, old World War II plane. It was called a Lockheed Load Star.

• 1:15:35Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  And here, but the Aerial Wing logo there painted on the, on the nose. And so we're now fly, we had no, we couldn't afford it. There's no way we could afford it. We're, but we didn't want to ask any questions. We did notice guys in the airports, a lot of times kind of surreptitiously taking photos. And then you thought, well, maybe these are our fans, you know. So fast forward, the pilot who had become the sixth member of the band says, we need to go meet the owner of the airplane. So he goes, we had a day off, took off out of Fort Smith, Arkansas. He goes, it's about an hour and a half to where the owner of the airplane is. So we're flying, we land in the middle of nowhere,

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  this airstrip, like in the middle of the desert. And here comes this guy walking, and he looked like, like the bad guy in a western, you know, his face was just like a thousand miles of bad roads. Gets on the plane and we're always, you know, throwing around, laughing, we're, you know.

• 1:16:35Billy Corgan?

  You're young.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  We're young and we're fun. We're having a great time. He gets on the plane and my, my seat was right in front of the door and it was a tail dragger. So he gets in the plane and it was silence. His vibe was so scary. He walks up to the front row, sits down, puts his tray table down. I couldn't see what he was doing, but, but I heard the sound of this snorting sound that you, that was just like. And normally, a brother would share. No, no, no. So now we take off. We're flying. And I'm looking out the window. And normally, after 10 minutes, we're up at, you know, 10,000 feet. I'm noticing we're like, we're still like right above the ground. We're like 500 feet, maybe 750 feet. Now we're 15 minutes into the flight.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  And I'm like, what is going on? All of a sudden, this guy gets up, walks down the aisle, goes back into the back compartment. And I hear what sounds like, like giant wrenches. I thought, I'm like, what's going on? Next thing I hear is the back door, the door of the airplane opens and the wind starts rushing in. Now I'm like, okay, I was afraid to look around. I look over my shoulder, swear to God. He's sitting on the floor. His feet are like this, up against either side of the door. He's got a weapon. And from my seat, I could see the cows, I could see the markings on the cows. That's how close we were.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  He takes this thing, it's, it was like an Uzi or an AK, whatever it was. It was a combat level machine gun. And he's like having target practice. I'm like, I can't even believe this. All of a sudden, door closes, gets up, clank, clank, clank, goes back to his seat. We, we never met him. He, no one ever introduced us. He never said a word. So fast forward, it's, we're, we're in, we're in our hotel in Washington DC. Knock, knock, knock. I look to the peephole. There's a group of young fans and they've got a book that looked like a high school yearbook. But it said Department of Drugs, Alcohol and Firearms. Something, it was a department of the US government.

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  Open the page. The page, the, the photo is from the perspective of an unmarked vehicle with agents with their, with their DEA, you know, windbreakers on, drawn down in the distance. There's the airplane with the Aereo Speedwagon logo painted on the, on the nose. Turned out they had, during our days off, they had been taking that plane. We were their cover, basically. And they were running guns from Mexico. The, the, the, the plane was found with no seats, full of quaaludes, pot and guns.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 1:19:33Billy Corgan?

  Irving.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  Irving.

• 1:19:34Billy Corgan?

  That's what I gotta say, Irving.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  I love him.

• 1:19:36Billy Corgan?

  God bless Irving.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  If he's on your side, you're, you're, you're in a good place. And Irving has always been on my side. He's even, even afterward, our, our.

• 1:19:45Billy Corgan?

  Despite our, despite our occasional battles, I think Irving still likes me somewhere in there.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  Have you had your?

• 1:19:51Billy Corgan?

  I've had my, I've had my, I believe the last time Irving wrote me an email, he said I was destroying my life.

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  What, what was the context? What were you doing to destroy your life?

• 1:20:01Billy Corgan?

  We had been, Irving had a management, I call it a pyramid structure. I don't mean that as pejorative. Kind of like, you know, Irving sits atop, he kind of oversees all these junior managers. It was called frontline at the time. I think it's now, I think it's been disbanded at some point. So we, we were, we were working with a couple of managers under Irving's Aegis.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:20:22Billy Corgan?

  And in the beginning Irving was very invested and as time went on and it didn't turn into the big reunion tour that everybody anticipated, Irving got less, less and less interested. The managers and I at some point didn't see eye to eye and, and, you know, I, I basically called the managers and I'm gonna leave, but it was peaceful. I'm still, you know, I would go out to lunch with either of the managers now. I still love Irving. And just as I was about to go out the door, I get a long email from Irving basically saying, you're destroying your, your life. If I could put it in a nutshell, and I, I don't think he was wrong in what he was suggesting, cause I, and I, and I don't think he would be mad even me, with me sharing this. He basically was saying,

• 1:20:59Billy Corgan?

  every artist in your position at some point has to accept that it's more about the past than the future. And, you know, you face those challenges, I face those challenges and, and maybe a fan wouldn't understand it, you know, we all start as young people with a dream. And at some point, if somebody kind of taps you on the shoulder and says, you know, it's really more about what's in the rearview mirror than what's in, in the front windshield, that's a hard day to kind of reconcile, even if you disagree. Because why are they tapping you on the shoulders, trying to tell you something? So Irving in his very Irving way, and, and, and again, I love Irving and have nothing but respect for him. I think he was trying to tell me it's that moment in your life. And I wrote him back very nicely and I said, Irving, you don't know me.

• 1:21:41Billy Corgan?

  And here I am some 15 years later and the band's bigger than ever. We're still releasing new music. I've just done an opera in Chicago, you know, that's focused on one of my past records, but I've completely reinterpreted it in a different way. So I don't think Irving saw that capability in me and, and, and I don't mean this disrespectfully to Irving. I just don't think Irving understands the, the psychological mentality of an alternative artist. And when I say alternative, I mean, an artist who came up in, in the Gen X, late eighties, early nineties generation, because we came just like when you were inspired by those artists in the sixties, who at the time, the Neil Youngs and the Stills, they were all counterculture artists.

• 1:22:21Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:22:22Billy Corgan?

  Well, we were counterculture artists in a different generation. So just like those artists, you play by a different set of rules. You're never going to pull a Graham Nash or Stephen Stills or, or Neil Young or David Crosby and tell them that they have to play by the rules, no matter how many times you tell them, no matter how many times you tell them the music business is going to change. They're like, we changed the world. And, and you can't take that out of somebody's DNA if they're one of those types of artists. And we were absolute total punks. We got away with murder with the stuff we did. So when somebody taps you on the shoulder and says it's time to be an adult, you think, eh, it's not really, it's not really my gig.

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  Well, you're more the, the exception than the rule too.

• 1:23:04Billy Corgan?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  And so from Irving's point of view, you, you can see why he would have said that.

• 1:23:08Billy Corgan?

  That's why I said, I, I don't, I don't take it disrespectfully, yeah.

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. But from your point of view, it makes perfect sense what you did.

• 1:23:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. I thought he was insane because I'm like, I got plenty of years to mess things up.

• 1:23:19Billy Corgan?

  So, thank you for listening. So, let's just talk because, you know,

• 1:23:25Billy Corgan?

  there's only so many people who reached the top of that particular mountain and the next record, the High Fidelity record.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  High Fidelity, yes.

• 1:23:32Billy Corgan?

  High Fidelity, sorry. I mean, you guys hit the absolute top of that particular mountain for that particular time.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, we kind of did. We kind of did. That was a

• 1:23:43Billy Corgan?

  10 million records. The record goes diamond.

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:46Billy Corgan?

  And we share that in common. We both had diamond records.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  I noticed that.

• 1:23:49Billy Corgan?

  That's a pretty exclusive club we're in, right?

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:23:51Billy Corgan?

  So, you did it.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:53Billy Corgan?

  And I mean, I know you've been asked about it a million times. Of course, you know, the great hit, number one record. I mean, just, just whatever you want to say about it, I'm happy to just, you know, because I, because I like to not ask the question that everybody asks you. So, you talk about whatever you want to talk about in that experience.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  Well, I can say that, that the, the experience of recording that album that, that went on to become High Fidelity, you don't know what it's going to become. You're just writing songs.

• 1:24:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it's just another record. You're going.

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Making demos. And so, we made demos of, of 10 songs. And then, we took a week off to listen to the demos and

• 1:24:37Billy Corgan?

  I think the demos are out, right? They're part of the deluxe package.

• 1:24:39Speaker 01

  The album is at least 50% those demos.

• 1:24:43Billy Corgan?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, we couldn't beat them.

• 1:24:46Billy Corgan?

  You know what we call in the biz? Demoitis.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, but in our case, you know, I was the only one who, I heard these demos. I listened to them over and over and over, driving around, you know, LA. And I was like, I'm starting to fall in love with the way, not just the songs. Normally, I hear the demos, like, oh, you gotta put this here and move this. I'm listening, I'm going, this is, I don't, I don't see that much work that I have to do on this, on the arrangement side, or on the lyric side, or it sounded really good to me. Gary has some guitar parts that were just like, how did he do that? You know, the feedback that opens the album, we could never duplicate that. And, but I had a, I had to convince the band.

• 1:25:33Speaker 01

  Really? Yeah, and the engineer who, who, who, you know, it was just a, a rough demo. And I'm like, these, these are, so we went back to the studio, played, beat the demo, finally couldn't do it. Yeah. And we ended up using the demos as the foundation and built the album. Yeah. On those, on those tracks. So I just feel like, and then the album goes on to be one of the biggest albums. Yeah. There, there is, it just, I like the fact that it started so organically. Hmm. That there was no, you know, REO Speedwagon gets a rap for, uh, that we somehow, uh, manufactured, uh, uh, the power ballad.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  And, and hey, uh, of course we wanted our, our record to get played on the radio. Who doesn't? But Keep on Loving You, I woke up in the middle of the night, kind of felt my way down the hallway in my little house in Woodman Hills, sat at my little Wurlitzer red plastic piano that Gary Loiseau had owned and played that little piano part that, that, that, uh, of Keep on Loving You, wrote those verses. And I don't know where it came from. I, I, you know, it just happened and there it was and was, so I, and I went back to bed because it was, I was, I was too tired. Next day I go into S I R where we, we're rehearsing and I immediately sat at the piano and started playing those verses over and over again.

• 1:27:00Speaker 01

  You can imagine the band is sitting there going, what the is this guy doing? When is he going to stop playing this stupid? And you're in a rock and roll band. I'm in a rock and roll band. And there's a certain type of song that's an REO Speedwagon song and some songs are not REO Speedwagon songs. And I would contend that if a member of REO Speedwagon writes a song. So I'm sitting there playing this, all of a sudden, and I didn't have a chorus and I'm just playing along and it's kind of dark. And then this chorus came to me and it's like this hopeful chorus. And, and Rich Raff, I don't know, I don't, I don't exactly know what was in his head, but at some point he got a plug in his left paw with a, with a curly cord directly into

• 1:27:44Speaker 01

  a Marshall, which is how he used to play. Sometimes he had a wah wah pedal, that was it. And uh, and he started playing along with me. Or he might've just been trying to drown me out. So I would stop playing this stupid slow song. But at one point, he, we, we, we kinda hit on something. And I, I'll never forget, I stepped to piano and I looked at him. And we looked at each other and it was like, we kinda knew that something.

• 1:28:12Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  Something had, some brain cells had, something had sparked.

• 1:28:17Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:17Speaker 01

  It was like, oh, this is what we've been trying to do for the last four, four years.

• 1:28:23Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:28:24Speaker 01

  Not without thinking that we were trying to do it.

• 1:28:26Billy Corgan?

  Well, that's, I, I get what you're saying. It's, it came from an organic place. It wasn't a, a record company thingamajiggy.

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  I think it became that.

• 1:28:35Billy Corgan?

  It, it. No, trust me, that's on the piece of paper next.

• 1:28:38Speaker 01

  Okay. So, yeah.

• 1:28:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So, uh,

• 1:28:46Billy Corgan?

  you guys end up having two number ones. That's one of them. And I think the next one is on the next record. Um, you know, classics. I mean, you can't, they're worldwide phenomenon songs, you know, once you have one of those songs. So, um, as a guy who grew up listening to the rock side of the band, I, I, I didn't understand it. And I'm sure you got that from a lot of like fans, right? Like, what is this?

• 1:29:08Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:29:08Billy Corgan?

  Is that REO Speedwagon, you know, that the band I, the band I grew up with? So I don't, I don't need you to speak to it necessarily in the personal, because I think it's more interesting to me that, uh, Chicago ended up doing it. Uh, you guys certainly leaned into it by, wouldn't you? You just had a massive record. But looking backwards, uh, you know, it's the stuff of, of stuff of people getting married. But isn't it interesting? I don't know, you tell me, but that these road-tested bands that really came out of rock, progressive rock, sixties music, it ended up turning into this other thing, which some people kinda go, I don't, I don't know about all that. You know, a lot of DX seven all of a sudden.

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:52Billy Corgan?

  If you get the joke.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:29:53Billy Corgan?

  You know, it's a lot of, you know, even the Doobies, right? I mean, who were basically kind of almost like a bar band.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  Jam band, yeah.

• 1:30:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. I mean, they got Michael McDonald and they went down that. So it, as a fan of the time, it seemed like it suddenly was like somebody flipped a switch somewhere and suddenly everybody's doing ballads. And, and in the eighties, it was the same complaint with the hair metal bands, that they all went ballad crazy too. So.

• 1:30:16Speaker 01

  Well, that was the way to get your record on the radio.

• 1:30:18Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  And, but, but for us, we were kind of like Time For Me To Fly. You mentioned Time For Me To Fly. There was no piano in Time For Me To Fly. That was a, that was a pure guitar song. It was a folk song. And, and so for us, it wasn't so much ballads. It was just mixing kind of hard rock with folk songs.

• 1:30:37Billy Corgan?

  Can I say it slightly differently though?

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:30:41Billy Corgan?

  I think you're a really strong rock singer.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:30:46Billy Corgan?

  Some people, some people like, you know, they're better at one thing or another, but you sing rock very, very well. And, and like I said, I, I always identified with you as a rock singer. So it wasn't like I couldn't identify you with as a ballad singer, but something about the way you sang ballads, it was like there, oh, there's this other thing that you do. And maybe the definition of the time, the times of course is part of it, but you seem to step forward and sort of like, I don't know, it's like, I don't want to say it's the best you, that's the wrong way to put it. It's like all of a sudden, there's this other version of you too. Like it was one plus one equals seven or something. And that seemed to expand the vision of the band. I didn't understand as a fan at the time, but as a writer now, I get it like, oh, okay.

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:27Billy Corgan?

  How could you not go there? Because you were really good at it. It's not like you were bad at it. It was obviously the public agreed.

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think I'm a better rock singer than I am a ba- I, I have to sing ballads because I write them sometimes, but, uh, but yeah, and we did, we, what, after High Fidelity, the record company definitely started.

• 1:31:51Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  It's like, we want another one of those.

• 1:31:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, we have about seven more of those if you can.

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  Yes. Could you please? And, and, uh, and everyone in the band was like, yeah, let's go back in the studio. And I'm sitting there going. With what? I I have unfinished songs. I'm not ready to go back in the studio. I still haven't uh digested what the phenomenon of what just happened to me. Billy, you know, it changes your life. Suddenly, you're you're clawing to be recognized and you're and you want to be famous.

• 1:32:22Billy Corgan?

  And now you can't sit down and have an Italian dinner with your family without somebody coming up and asking for a picture and autograph or.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  And and even worse than that, it it is a I always thought that that that fame and fortune and and hit records would would cure everything. All the insecurity would go away, everything. And so when you get to the top of the mountain and you're like, oh, not only is it not curing all this stuff, it's it's exacerbating it. It's it's people are looking at you and and and you're hiding all this stuff. And now everyone's looking at you. It makes it harder to hide when you're when people are looking at you. So I was my mind was blown. I was like, oh, my God, this is crazy. Well, the rest of the guys in the band are like, let's go. And I'm like, you guys are out of.

• 1:33:13Billy Corgan?

  Hey, write another one of those if you could, Kevin.

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're out of your mind, you know?

• 1:33:18Billy Corgan?

  Um, so, uh, I I I Googled or something. I I asked, you know, whatever, one of these AI systems, how many records have you sold in your in your musical life? Over 40 million?

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:33:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  So I should I should probably get a royalty check then at some point.

• 1:33:37Billy Corgan?

  Well, I can't speak. I can't speak to your deals.

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  We should. Surely we've recouped by.

• 1:33:42Billy Corgan?

  But, um, look, the the band, at least from my perspective, is an institutional band. So as a way to kind of bring it to a restful thing, uh, you know, the most recent news, and I don't do clickbait, so I'm not asking you for the dirt on the kerfuffle with the band, with the name and the thing and you on your own and all that. Um, but what I am, I'm I guess what I'm after is.

• 1:34:10Billy Corgan?

  I just thought, you know, maybe the easiest thing to do is try to put yourself in somebody else's shoes. You've got, you know, huge songs that are crossover hits. You know, you're singing ballads that are still being played in Thai cafes, right?

• 1:34:31Billy Corgan?

  Two things occur to me. Number one, you stay with the band and you've stayed with the band up until really recently. You guys just toured last year as the time of us taping this. But secondarily, you resisted the temptation because I'm sure somebody went to you and said, hey, you know, it might be time to jump off the ship if you want. A lot more money and it can be about you and da, da, da, da, da, because we've all been in that. So I guess what I'm saying in a very kind of amorphous way is not do you regret staying, not do you wish you have a solo thing? It's like, where does that all land for you in 2025, the time we're taping this? Are you cool with it if you've reached the end of the road with the band, that group of people?

• 1:35:16Billy Corgan?

  Like, how do you sit with all that? Because it seems to me,

• 1:35:21Billy Corgan?

  and this may be an unfair way to put it. And again, I'm putting myself in your shoes. If I'd stayed loyal to my band through the thick and thin, through the great gigs and the bad gigs and the county fairs and the fans wanting to hear, "Keep on loving you for the 8,000th time" and all of the stuff that only people like us kind of know what that feels like. It's not a bad thing. It's just a particular type of pressure.

• 1:35:45Billy Corgan?

  Where do you sit with all that? Are you at peace? So, you know, like, because you don't strike me as somebody who's got any,

• 1:35:53Billy Corgan?

  you know, what's the axe to grind?

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Yeah. No, I really don't, Billy.

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  During the pandemic, I think people tend to downplay that the impact that the pandemic had on everyone. And it's really easy to look in the rearview mirror and say, ah, it was nothing. You know, people overreacted and, but I was one of the guys who would be washing down my groceries at home. So the pandemic, it just shut everything down, you know? I was walking to sound check on Friday, the 13th, Friday, March 13th, 2020, when the plug got pulled. But what happened is I was home for a year and a half.

• 1:36:37Speaker 01

  And I really started to like it. I liked being, seeing not just my, my kids' ballgames and graduations.

• 1:36:47Billy Corgan?

  And you have six, right?

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  No, then I don't, that's somehow, I know. So I, I, I should have warned you about that.

• 1:36:53Billy Corgan?

  A touring musician.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  Yes. Who knows? Maybe there are some that I don't know about. If you are, hello. But um.

• 1:36:59Billy Corgan?

  I love you.

• 1:37:00Speaker 01

  Yes. But um, uh, but that time really, really affected me and, and I started kind of reassessing some things and I, and, and I started wanting to reach further. I think REO Speedwagon had kind of, you know, with Gary's death, that was, Gary leaving the band was, was difficult. His death was, was difficult. And I think I was, I was wanting a little more. Uh, and not necessarily outside the band. I wanted to, I wanted to lift the band in some way. Tommy Shaw and I have be, became friends in the year 2000 and he has a similar,

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  Tommy Shaw from Styx. He has a similar idea as I do and he, um, we kind of balance each other and, and uh, so I'm getting a little lost here, but, but I, I wanted to lift the band. I wanted to stay within the confines of REO Speedwagon, but I, I hired a vocal coach and I started working on my, so working on my singing, working to really get the most that I possibly can out of my voice, to put the most emotion into the songs, to really get that thing that Becca Bramlett showed me back in the day in Nashville. And so I really started working hard. And I still, when I leave here, I'm going to my vocal coaches. He's, he's in the neighborhood.

• 1:38:31Speaker 01

  And um, so I really started putting in the, the 10,000 hours on my voice. So when, when the band got back together after the pandemic, I was psyched. And, and some of the guys in the band shared that, that excitement and some of the guys didn't. And um, so it became a little bit of a, like, wait a minute, what's going on here, you know? And um, so,

• 1:38:57Speaker 01

  there was a little bit of a, of a, of a chasm, uh, opening within the band. And then, then uh,

• 1:39:06Speaker 01

  You know, Bruce hurt himself, our bass player Bruce, who was my, my sidekick. Every, every side project that I ever did, Bruce was always part of it. And we were just simpatico. Musically, he was a Beatles guy as, as I am. And, uh, uh, but, um, Bruce hurt his back a long time ago. And, and I'd been working on a, on a presentation for the band for a Las Vegas residency. Which has to be different than what you do on tour. Sure. So the idea was to perform the entire Heim Finality record all the way through with a, a massive audio visual, uh, presentation, different, very theatrical in a way, but still rock and roll. Yeah.

• 1:39:51Speaker 01

  But I put a lot of work into it with our, uh, with our content and lighting director, Paul Dexter. And when Bruce hurt himself, it was a, a week before we were supposed to open in Vegas. And I put a, a year of work into this. And people buy tickets for all over the world to come to for a residency. And so I didn't want to lose the residency. And, and I, I, and I said, I said, Bruce, you've got to go home, take care of yourself, you know, and he did. And, and I was, and I just was, if, if there's a way to salvage this thing, I'm going to salvage it. And it just so happened that Elton John had retired and his bass player, who's a, uh, named Matt Bissonnet, Greg Bissonnet's brother. Oh, wow. All friends of ours.

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  And Matt came out, learned our entire set list overnight, came in with a stack of, of, of charts, read the charts for a couple of days, threw the charts away. And there's, something happened in the band. And, and it just, and I was trying to lift the band. Now I felt the band lifting me. And I felt myself, and, and I, I was in the midst of this, of these, taking these vocal lessons. And suddenly there was this new energy. Someone, someone, uh, one of the guys in Elton's band told me, uh, not long ago, he goes, he, he goes, Matt Bissonnet's the kind of guy where any band he's in, the band gets better.

• 1:41:19Speaker 01

  And so it was just like unplanned, completely unplanned. Yeah. Life just sometimes happens. And then what do you do? Right. So that was kind of the scenario because I think I love Bruce and I think he might feel like I was out to get him. I've heard that from people that there's a feeling there. And it's just not the case at all. I hold no ill feelings toward him. It's just, it just became an impossible situation where it's always been my job, I felt,

• 1:41:59Speaker 01

  especially since Gary left. If, I remember the day that it was, I was either gonna go and do a solo album or stick with REO Speedwagon. I was standing with John Barrett and John said, "Well, if you're gonna, if we're gonna end the band, I guess we gotta empty the locker, sell the equipment." And it was like, it was like the ice water thing where they pour ice water in your head. I was just like, "Wait, what?" That just blew my mind. And I thought at that moment, I haven't really given this my all yet, you know? Because before it was Gary and I, and then the band, of course, Alan and Neil and Bruce were all part of it, but Gary and I were sitting in the front seat of the roller coaster, you

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  know? And so I felt it was my job to continue to keep REO Speedwagon moving forward. My relationship with Tommy Shaw and our relationship with Styx helped that because Tommy felt the same way about Styx. Tommy joined Styx right about the same time I rejoined REO. And there was, there was talk of Tommy and I being in a band together for a hot second. But, um, so there was never any, there was never any preconceived notion on my part that, that, that I thought that REO Speedwagon would ride into the barn, we would all retire at the same time as friends, the crew would be with us.

• 1:43:25Billy Corgan?

  Life is funny that way though, right?

• 1:43:26Speaker 01

  I know. It just didn't, it didn't work out that way. And, and it, it's been a year for me of kind of my mind being a little blown by that because like you said it, REO Speedwagon is an American institution of sorts. And so there's a lot of people that are disappointed by the fact that REO Speedwagon has put out a statement saying that we're not gonna ever tour again. So, um, but...

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  The good news is, is that we, the, the, for the last four months,

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  where normally I'd be thinking about the, the 2026 tour.

• 1:44:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:07Speaker 01

  I haven't been thinking about that for the first time in 50 years. So it's a, so my, and, and my wife was out of town. My wife went down to Florida and reconnected with, she wanted to hang out with her sisters down there. She loves her family. She's a Wisconsin girl. Beautiful. I love her to death. Without her, I'm not sitting here right now. But, um, so I'm home by myself, back from the road and not thinking about the next tour. It's like, who am I? What am I? What am I doing?

• 1:44:37Billy Corgan?

  I'm laughing because I know this feeling.

• 1:44:39Speaker 01

  You know the feeling.

• 1:44:40Billy Corgan?

  Absolutely.

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  So it's like, what am I gonna do? And what I found myself falling into is challenging myself. When, you know, when you're on tour, I don't know if your tours were the same as this, but our tours were very male oriented. Everyone, we had one woman on the crew. Our, our band is all men. And, and I know you've had a female in the band before. I'm not sure how that works, but, but, you know, so your, your male friend group is pretty much

• 1:45:12Speaker 01

  spoken for. But I, but I had a few male friends at home, you know, husbands of what, of, of my wife's friends who I've been, been close to. But I'm like, I'm gonna, one, one of the neighbors is walking his dogs. Great guy. Name's Michael Liddell. Brilliant. I've always loved him. Never really went out and hung out with him. So we, we went out and had sushi together, you know? And so I've, I've been, just like, you know, Pat Benataran and Bryan Adams played the Forum. And Tommy, who you might've met, manages Pat and Spider and said, well, come down to the Forum. See the show. I'm like, I'm gonna sit in traffic for two hours to see someone else's show at the Forum?

• 1:45:57Speaker 01

  I'm like, Yes, I, yes, I am gonna do that. And I did. And Billy, it was, I met, it was just like this inspiring, like, mind-expanding feelings that I had being there. So I'm just challenging myself and pushing myself. One of our neighbors up at the beach invited me to go out on a little boat ride with him, out to the islands, out to the Channel Islands. I'm like, okay, let's go. You know, so that's kind of where my head is at now. I'm just like, I'm gonna finish my book that I've been working on for nine years.

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna be living between tour legs for the first time in 50 years. And you know how that is.

• 1:46:49Billy Corgan?

  I understand this very deeply.

• 1:46:51Speaker 01

  You're out, you're out for three weeks. You come home for 10 days. It takes you 10 days to catch up on everything you missed in the three weeks, and then you're gone.

• 1:46:58Billy Corgan?

  Out you go.

• 1:46:59Speaker 01

  So, yeah. So here we are.

• 1:47:04Billy Corgan?

  Well, my last question I was gonna ask you is to ask you to define happiness, but I think you just did.

• 1:47:09Speaker 01

  Well, as a matter of fact, it's funny you should say that, because when my wife got back from Florida, we were, I was sharing some of this with her. And I said, I said, "Lisa, I feel like I'm, I'm fighting for my happiness." And she said, "Well, that sounds kind of negative, fighting and happiness." And I said, "Well, I don't, I don't feel like it's negative. I feel like I'm fighting for it, like I have to push myself." And she, she was, she kind of helps push me too. She always has. That's been kind of a piece of our relationship. She's a brilliant woman, worked, I met her, she worked for David Geffen when, back in the day.

• 1:47:48Speaker 01

  And, yeah, she, so she, she believes in me sometimes more than I believe in myself. And she pushes me to, when she hears me wanting to challenge myself, she's like, "Yeah, that sounds good, do that."

• 1:48:04Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Thank you. I love talking to you.

• 1:48:06Speaker 01

  Thank you, Billy. What a pleasure.

• 1:48:07Billy Corgan?

  Thank you.