Conrad Flynn Part 2 | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

On this provocative episode, Billy Corgan sits down with returning guest Conrad Flynn to explore the uneasy intersection of fame, power, the occult, and modern celebrity culture. Their conversation moves beyond headlines into the architecture of influence, the blurred lines between entertainment and politics, and the deeper question of who actually shapes the cultural narrative. They debate whether the surge of occult symbolism in pop is pure marketing, spiritual theater, or a reflection of something deeper—and whether rock’s once-defiant cultural voice has quietly been sidelined. Corgan also reflects on the personal cost of fame, the realities of industry manipulation, and why faith, truth, and integrity are the only antidotes to a rigged system. 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.

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• 1:14Billy Corgan?

  It's better off for everybody if we actually just don't start opening these doors. If there was, if there was all this understanding and knowledge, why does it go on and then why does it stop going? They get into the occult, they do rituals, and it coincides with their success. Right. The public can't help but get into an argument about, is this, or is this not true?

• 1:33Speaker 04

  One of the British Members of Parliament, that was one of his colleagues. Jeffrey Epstein's essential father-in-law.

• 1:39Billy Corgan?

  I have watched where incredibly powerful people seem to be above the law.

• 1:43Speaker 04

  I mean, look what happened with, with, in the last few years with celebrities. I don't want to bring this up. When people... We gotta go viral here. Keep going.

• 1:54Billy Corgan?

  Conrad Flynn, welcome back to the TMO Show.

• 1:57Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:57Billy Corgan?

  The first guest I've ever had back.

• 1:59Speaker 04

  I'm excited. This is our own double album.

• 2:02Billy Corgan?

  Well, it's Kiss Alive 2. I think that's what we're going with.

• 2:06Billy Corgan?

  Anything you want to jump in on before I go down my particular rabbit hole? I mean, we've caught a little fire online. That's interesting. We've good business together in wrestling parlance.

• 2:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I want to ask you about wrestling at some point.

• 2:18Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 2:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, I'll actually ask you. A friend of mine wanted me to ask. You once said that in music and rock history, the logic of wrestling and marketing is very similar to how pop works in terms of pop stars are marketed or can be marketed in a way that's not unlike wrestling in terms of getting someone over. Marketing, what kind of group? Are there any acts, including the Smashing Pumpkins, that you have ever analogized to a pop act where you're like, this guy's kind of like, it's like, I know Bob Dylan is famously influenced by Gorgeous George.

• 2:52Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I see.

• 2:53Speaker 04

  David Bowie and glam took itself from this British wrestler. In your work with NWA or in wrestling, have you ever noticed? Like, what did you mean by that? And do you have any analogies to that, to wrestling and pop?

• 3:07Billy Corgan?

  I just think it's the, what I attach to is it's the mechanics of

• 3:14Billy Corgan?

  getting people to buy into an avatar.

• 3:16Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:17Billy Corgan?

  And as the audience leans into the avatar, the artist or the person behind the avatar leans into it too. So you create almost like a third person.

• 3:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:26Billy Corgan?

  Hulk Hogan, his real name was Terry Barea. He wasn't Hulk Hogan, but he became Hulk Hogan. John Wayne wasn't John Wayne. He became John Wayne.

• 3:36Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 3:37Billy Corgan?

  So I'm sort of fascinated by the mechanism of creating the avatar and how whether it's a Bruce Springsteen or a John Wayne or a David Bowie, they figure out that they can sort of work with this third entity that exists between the audience and the person holding the marionette strings.

• 3:56Speaker 04

  Well, that's something Gorgeous George, the wrestler, said to Bob Dylan in Bob Dylan's memoirs. He said that they passed each other and Gorgeous George said, "You're getting people to believe in it."

• 4:08Speaker 04

  Bob Dylan says, "I'm not 100% sure that's what he said." But he's like, "That's what I thought he said. That's what's more important is he said you're getting people to believe in it."

• 4:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So wrestling is the overt expression.

• 4:20Billy Corgan?

  An acknowledgement that that is what is actually happening.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 4:23Billy Corgan?

  And now that the business has been exposed since Vince McMahon came out and said, okay, it's not real.

• 4:28Speaker 04

  Right.

• 4:28Billy Corgan?

  Uh, circa 1989, now we have a lot of people actually exploring that through wrestling fan sites and on wrestling podcasts, like is the, is so and so doing a good job of the avatar?

• 4:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 4:41Billy Corgan?

  Music seems to be behind this particular curve culturally. People still want to believe that Lady Gaga is Lady Gaga all the time.

• 4:47Speaker 04

  Right, right, right, right.

• 4:48Billy Corgan?

  And as someone who came out very early in the process of the nineties and actually started talking about these things and paid the price for it because people did, people wanted me to be a rock star, not somebody explaining what a rock star is.

• 4:59Speaker 04

  Right.

• 5:01Billy Corgan?

  And now, of course, it's out, it's all very outward, but I still think it's funny that the public is still enamored with the idea that people are these people 24/7 when it's obviously, it's patently obvious that they're not.

• 5:12Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 5:13Billy Corgan?

  So, um, uh, I don't know if that answered your question, but I-

• 5:16Speaker 04

  No, that does, that's a good job.

• 5:18Billy Corgan?

  I, I tend to spend more time in the mechanism. And in, in essence, why is it that the public by and large is fascinated with this mechanism, which is now in plain sight?

• 5:30Speaker 04

  Right, right, right. Well, as you said, uh, you, you do a, a character long enough or a shtick long enough, you, you can kind of become that thing, uh, you kind of disappear into it.

• 5:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, and I've known very famous rock stars that at some point you go, wait, are you still in there? Because a few years back, I was talking to the real person and now I'm talking to this avatar.

• 5:49Speaker 04

  Right.

• 5:49Billy Corgan?

  And oh, by the way, I know you're not the avatar, so don't try to run the game with the avatar on me.

• 5:55Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 5:56Billy Corgan?

  And a lot of times in those circumstances, you actually get pushed out of the circle.

• 5:59Speaker 04

  Right.

• 5:59Billy Corgan?

  Because they don't need somebody saying, no, no, no, he's from Ohio or he's from Iowa.

• 6:03Speaker 04

  Right.

• 6:05Billy Corgan?

  They want to really believe, they, you need to go along with the munchkin version, like you, whatever is the creation, you need to go along with it, you're going to be pushed out of the rhythm. At least in that particular fiefdom.

• 6:16Billy Corgan?

  I found it hard, uh, in, in the success of our, uh, first interview together, uh, I find it hard- Because people will mention the clips and stuff that came out.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 6:27Billy Corgan?

  So I'm going to put it on you. Try to explain to people what you actually do because I find it hard to explain.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm a writer now. You know, I was developing these different projects about Rockin' the Occult and some other Hollywood stuff.

• 6:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 04

  But, you know, as of right now, I'm working on the Substack.

• 6:46Billy Corgan?

  So you're out of work is basically what you're saying.

• 6:48Speaker 04

  I'm always kind of half out of work doing stuff. I mean, how else do you have time to read so many weird books?

• 6:54Speaker 04

  No, but things are coming along.

• 6:56Billy Corgan?

  But writer is your most comfortable.

• 6:58Speaker 04

  Writer is the main thing. But like nowadays, it's amorphous. Like I've been doing podcasts and that requires some time and I'll probably do my own podcast soon.

• 7:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, or maybe you're creating some form that we haven't sort of figured out yet.

• 7:09Speaker 04

  See, that's the publicist answer. That's great. He's not unemployed. He's doing too many jobs. He's doing all the jobs.

• 7:16Billy Corgan?

  Well, you do have publicist DNA in there.

• 7:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, because I find it hard sometimes to explain to people how you fit in because as you can imagine, well, most people want to say, well, he's this.

• 7:26Speaker 04

  Right.

• 7:27Billy Corgan?

  And I found myself struggling with the word.

• 7:29Speaker 04

  You can just say writer. That's very funny because this is conversations I've had with people over the years. People who are even close to me like, I have a hard time telling people like what it is you do or who you are. And I'm just like, you know, a writer, reader, enthusiast. But yeah, writer is pretty much the main thing.

• 7:44Billy Corgan?

  So real quick for people didn't see the first episode, you have a Substack.

• 7:50Speaker 04

  Yes, yes. We have the Flynn Effect, which I started a few months ago and it's pretty much some current events, but a lot of history, secret history of pop. We did one on the secret history of the Wizard of Oz, the occult history with L. Frank Baum. Yeah, we did that. I'm doing one right now on the similarity of the new left of the 1970s and the way that they kind of glommed on to John Lennon and the way that the new right kind of glommed on to Kanye West a few years ago, kind of comparing Gruypers with the yippies and Abbie Hoffman with Nick Fuentes. There's a picture of Abbie Hoffman where he looks exactly like Nick Fuentes pointing directly at a camera.

• 8:33Speaker 04

  That is eerie. And so I'm doing a thing right now about how these countercultural or subculture things, they tend to repeat. And yeah, so it's essentially.

• 8:44Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so let's explore that for a second. So do you think it's in some ways, it's these representative avatars? Like, are people responding to the same sort of signals?

• 8:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, it's same thing in music where people want certain kinds of figures and they they want certain kinds of things to identify with.

• 8:58Billy Corgan?

  Well, I don't I don't know Mr. Fuentes. He's from Chicago, my hometown, but.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  It's good you don't know. It's good you don't know. That's the thing to get out of the way.

• 9:05Billy Corgan?

  I'm fine to know anybody. I'm not afraid of anybody. But what I would say about Nick Fuentes, if he I think he did an interview with Tucker Carlson, but he he talked about, let's call it his origin story, how he had been this into this political whatever you want to call it. He's in Firestorm or. But um, he he in many ways kind of feeds into this concept of an avatar, you see, because he was just a student. And some things happened and it kind of pushed him in a particular direction. And this is his story. I don't know if it's true or not, but he basically says he had no plans on being this person.

• 9:38Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:39Billy Corgan?

  But so it becomes at some point, it becomes the idea of the the object and the observer.

• 9:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:44Billy Corgan?

  At one point, does the object become aware they're being observed and start to lean into the observation?

• 9:50Speaker 04

  Well, that's something one of my favorite writers, Eric Hopper, talked about where he's like, the people you know can almost cast you as something like they're a director, a casting director.

• 9:58Billy Corgan?

  I love that you say casting because this is very, this is something I'm very interested in.

• 10:02Speaker 04

  Well, that's just it. So yeah, the way other people's perception of you can turn you into something because they want you to be that thing. I mean, as a rock star, I was talking to my friend Jake about this last night because he's worked as a Hollywood writer for a long time. And we're talking, he's talking about egos and, you know, the way certain people can get bad attitudes. And we were saying, I know this a little bit from my grandfather, but also just from the world of publicity. The way other people want you to be a certain jerky rock star, not to take the onus off of bad behavior, but the way that people in your circle wants you to be this big authority figure and then wants you to not be a pushover. Or they want you to be glam, ends up encouraging people potentially to take on the kind of bad attitudes they wouldn't otherwise have because people in their circle are like, come on, I'm not I'm not dating, you know, Billy Corgan, the regular dude. I'm dating a rock star. Don't let them talk to you that way.

• 10:47Speaker 04

  Be this thing. And the way that you see other people wanting you to kind of be this thing. Again, not to take away the personal responsibility of bad behavior. But other people's desire for you to be a thing can, of course, encourage you to be that.

• 11:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I am. I tried to create a clear delineation between my public and private personality when I was very young, and I continually ran into people who expressed overt and outward disappointment that I was not living up to the image they thought in their mind.

• 11:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 11:18Billy Corgan?

  Now, when it extends into your family circle and your friend's circle, that's like, let's call it, that's the first iteration of.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 11:25Billy Corgan?

  What are they expressing? They're expressing like, shouldn't you be more into this?

• 11:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 11:29Billy Corgan?

  The second iteration is then the public version where somebody, because they've seen you in a video or a magazine, shows up and they can't understand why you don't match what they have in their head.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 11:39Billy Corgan?

  And that's why oftentimes, say, most rock stars and pop stars are sociopathic, because they quickly figure out it's a lot easier to play along.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 11:47Billy Corgan?

  Oh, like, oh, you think I'm this spooky guy who lives in a basement? Okay, I'm just gonna play the spooky in a basement.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  That'd be a fascinating study, is testing for sociopathy amongst pop stars. A controlled test. That would be, that's something we should get funding for.

• 12:01Billy Corgan?

  I would bet a lot of money on that one.

• 12:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, to go back really quick to the Nick Fuentes thing, a piece I wrote about a month ago was comparing people like him, a lot of podcasters, like Andrew Tate, as essentially the new gangster rappers, where they get in front of a microphone and they say like the most heinous, make your mom stuff, make your mom cry stuff. And that that's the kind of modern purpose they serve. And I was talking about how commercially rap has been on the decline for the last few years, and only half in jest do I point out that like, the rise of certain kinds of podcasters tie in with this idea of like, this is like.

• 12:36Billy Corgan?

  Well, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I think it's the, the thing that flashes is in my mind is like, who's on the mic?

• 12:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 12:41Billy Corgan?

  Right? And, and whoever can step up and get on the mic and get the attention, well, that's where the energy's gonna, gonna flow.

• 12:48Speaker 04

  And the money.

• 12:49Billy Corgan?

  And right now, it's really in the podcast space.

• 12:51Speaker 04

  Right. So, yeah, so that's, you know, the bad boys.

• 12:54Billy Corgan?

  You're stepping, you're stepping into the ring here soon, right?

• 12:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:57Billy Corgan?

  You're getting on the mic.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  I already am. This is, we're recording, aren't we? So this is.

• 13:02Billy Corgan?

  Well, this is my mic, but, but you seem to be doing a good, good job of subverting it.

• 13:09Billy Corgan?

  So let's, one last thing.

• 13:13Billy Corgan?

  Because, you know, we are sort of openly kind of playing with the game of avatars and self-reflection. So now that we've entered this particular space and in the conversation that we had, clips went viral.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  Sure, sure.

• 13:25Billy Corgan?

  A lot of stuff that I said during it and stuff that you said during it, I was surprised people were as interested in it as they were.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  I'm not surprised if we're interested in that. When I saw those clips, I'm like, this will go viral. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, when you're talking about like being approached by people.

• 13:38Billy Corgan?

  So not to be overly reflective, but it feeds into what we're going to talk about. But um, what's your impression in that in the, in the short term? Because, you know, you're entering into your own public sort of avatar phase.

• 13:49Speaker 04

  Sure. Oh, I mean, like, it is strange, as you said, and it's very, very true. People end up having an idea of you that's based off this person that does and doesn't exist. It's the public avatar.

• 14:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 04

  I mean, occult concepts like tulpa's or whatever of you, or it's like this, this third created creature that isn't you. And so at some point early on, again, the sociopathic nature of being a pop star or any sort of public figure, you have to like pathologically turn off certain kinds of criticism in the sense of you can't listen to it all. And they're usually criticizing something that exists a little bit independently of you after a certain point. I'm not at that point, but you certainly are, where it's like the Billy Corgan that exists as an idea or as a cartoon. At some point, you're like, oh, I'm not that guy either. I get a kick out of that guy, you know?

• 14:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Yeah, I've been through this a few times. So I, you know, I just saw, I saw the wave coming in and I just kind of let it wash over everything.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  It is, yeah, a wave.

• 14:46Billy Corgan?

  Because um, the one thing I have found, and I'm going to put quotations around the word truth.

• 14:53Speaker 04

  Right.

• 14:54Billy Corgan?

  When you speak something akin to the truth, and let's call it universal truth, not man's truth.

• 15:00Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 15:00Billy Corgan?

  You know, because that's always arguable. But when you speak to universal truth, you get this kind of kick, kickback reaction.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 15:08Billy Corgan?

  And it creates a cognitive dissonance, which is, is that true?

• 15:11Speaker 04

  Right.

• 15:12Billy Corgan?

  You see some of the, some of the grand public figures of our times, of course, the 20th century, who work in this polemic where they throw out something that's what they would, in publicity terms, call red meat.

• 15:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 15:24Billy Corgan?

  They kind of throw red meat out.

• 15:26Speaker 04

  Right.

• 15:26Billy Corgan?

  The public can't help but get into an argument about is this, or is this not true? And I, at least in my own particular case, have learned that if you say things that are essentially universally true.

• 15:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 15:37Billy Corgan?

  The argument is irrelevant because the the argument is because people haven't actually thought the thing through.

• 15:42Speaker 04

  Right. It's just dogma or cliche.

• 15:43Billy Corgan?

  Their natural reaction is to personalize it, and you'll probably learn this yourself. They'll personalize it and make it about you.

• 15:49Speaker 04

  Right.

• 15:49Billy Corgan?

  You know, they'll start attacking your song or, you know, your your failed career, whatever they whatever conceptually they think you're where your avatar is.

• 15:56Speaker 04

  Right.

• 15:57Billy Corgan?

  And um, and even talking about avatars, you know, uh, as I move through life, I deal, of course, consistently with, let's call it the general avatar of what people think I am.

• 16:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 16:07Billy Corgan?

  And it's kind of uh, over thirty something years, it's kind of fallen into kind of a groove.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  Sure, sure.

• 16:12Billy Corgan?

  But then every once in a while, you step into a into a place where um, you realize that your your own conception of your avatar is out of step with the person who has some conception of you that's ten or fifteen or twenty years old.

• 16:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 16:24Billy Corgan?

  Um, that's interesting, too. So then you almost get into time phase alignment where the where are we on the avatar arc?

• 16:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 16:32Billy Corgan?

  Cause I'm living in the avatar today.

• 16:34Speaker 04

  Right.

• 16:34Billy Corgan?

  And I saw people's reactions to some of the stuff that we said together, and and that's somewhat consistent with where my avatar is sitting.

• 16:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 16:41Billy Corgan?

  Because I've been I've been bubbling on the outside of culture for about twenty years.

• 16:45Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 16:46Billy Corgan?

  And and many people went out of their way to basically say that that avatar was dead, never to return.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 16:52Billy Corgan?

  So my resurrection of sorts and of Prince once said, you know, I what comeback I never left.

• 16:57Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 16:58Billy Corgan?

  But um, now you see people not only wrestling with whether or not what I'm saying is true, they're also wrestling with the idea that how is he still standing here?

• 17:05Speaker 04

  Right, the different like we're saying, the cartoon versions that they want to bring out. And like, wait, this is still a cartoon version of me. This is also an older version of me. You're getting into something I was talking about last night. Uh, so when the actor Matthew Perry, you know, he passed away last year, but a few years ago, he released his memoirs.

• 17:20Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 17:21Speaker 04

  And uh, in he caught some flack initially, Matthew Perry did, because he made fun of Keanu Reeves in his memoirs. But what's what's key about this, what ties in what you're talking about, he was making fun of Keanu Reeves essentially for being like a dumb guy or a doofus. He was making jokes about Keanu Reeves that were popular in nineteen ninety five.

• 17:39Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Cause in the mid nineties, people loved the idea of making fun of Keanu Reeves essentially as if he was his Bill and Ted character. That was his.

• 17:45Billy Corgan?

  I don't remember that.

• 17:47Speaker 04

  Oh, no, it was a, yeah, but in the last 20 years, Keanu Reeves went from being a guy that a comedian would make fun of for being dumb, which wasn't true, but was the, you know, the nature of the joke about him. To now Keanu Reeves is essentially the new Bruce Lee, where, you know, people will misattribute Bruce Lee quotes to him and be like, you know, be water, Keanu Reeves. In other words, Keanu Reeves has gone from being a guy whose avatar is the dumb stoner guy to being this worldly wise, mystic Hollywood actor. Now, Matthew Perry didn't know that because for what, you know, he wasn't keeping up.

• 18:19Billy Corgan?

  Oh, so he was still, he was still in the mindset of.

• 18:21Speaker 04

  1995.

• 18:22Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 18:22Speaker 04

  But it was, but people thought, what is Matthew Perry's problem with Keanu Reeves? Not realizing he was just essentially doing a very old joke, not realizing that he didn't know how old this joke was. And that things have actually flipped in the, you know, quite the opposite. Keanu Reeves is now a philosopher and like a sage. He, you know, that's the new shtick. But to your point, people can have an old, old cartoon version of someone that is not only is so outdated, but the opposite has happened. So it's, I mean, it's sad now with Matthew Perry is dead, but people didn't know, like, he was only making fun of him because this is what he remembered in 1995.

• 18:54Billy Corgan?

  Well, the way I, the way I actually, if you want to talk about the mechanism of avatars, the way I, I actually subverted that process of people being stuck on my old avatars, I allowed them to die.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  Really?

• 19:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. I committed kind of a public seppuku with the character. And even my therapist at the time said, you did a good thing.

• 19:13Speaker 04

  That's wild.

• 19:14Billy Corgan?

  He said they needed a body and you gave them one.

• 19:16Speaker 04

  The machima of pop, you know, but that's, that's really.

• 19:20Billy Corgan?

  Well, we'll see if it, if it works. We're, we're still, we're still in this transitory phase here. But thank you for being on the podcast because this is part of my, my outward war against.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  This is fun.

• 19:31Billy Corgan?

  Because here's the thing, it's very Philip K. Dickian, if that's even.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:35Billy Corgan?

  But it's, it's now we're into the battle of the avatars.

• 19:38Speaker 04

  Right. Well, totally.

• 19:39Billy Corgan?

  Wait, stop because I, because I want to make sure that that lands. Do you understand what I mean by that?

• 19:43Speaker 04

  In terms of there being different pop versions of people that are totally plastic or created that aren't real, but they're different versions.

• 19:51Billy Corgan?

  Let's take it out of the realm of music for a second because I think it's a, because we're, as we take this, we're in the midst of the NFL playoffs.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 19:57Billy Corgan?

  I was watching a quarterback talk about their perspective in, in what ultimately became a, a season that ended with a loss. It's pretty typical, only two teams go to the Super Bowl, one wins, da da. But the person was talking. Almost from this, I don't want to say who it was, but they were talking from the standpoint of they were actually beginning to build their avatar publicly.

• 20:21Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 20:21Billy Corgan?

  That, that their, that their, that their goal is not just to win Super Bowls, which in the world that I grew up in, that's all that mattered.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 20:30Billy Corgan?

  In fact, there was a period in the NFL where they didn't want to show the players' faces and they were happy they were behind masks because they could basically market the NFL, what they called the shield.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  Right, the helmet.

• 20:40Billy Corgan?

  And then eventually Tom Brady came along and they realized, no way, it's actually better for business that we market these people.

• 20:45Speaker 04

  To have a celebrity.

• 20:46Billy Corgan?

  And now down the line, of course, now we've even intertwined pop music into, into the NFL with.

• 20:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 20:51Billy Corgan?

  With the oncoming marriage of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey. The point, the point that I'm after was I was, I was stunned and somewhat pleased because here was a professional athlete in, in the, in the, in the prime of their youth and, and capability.

• 21:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 21:07Billy Corgan?

  Already consciously talking about not having yet won a Super Bowl, already consciously talking about that, that their, that their plan isn't just to win and win a Super Bowl, their plan is to build the avatar.

• 21:19Speaker 04

  Really?

• 21:19Billy Corgan?

  Well, because in the, in the, in the professional sports world, if you're, if you're, if you have a long tail on your logic.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 21:26Billy Corgan?

  Your real money is going to come after you play.

• 21:28Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 21:30Billy Corgan?

  You're going to go on television, you're gonna, you're gonna be in commercials like Peyton Manning.

• 21:34Speaker 04

  Right.

• 21:34Billy Corgan?

  So I think you see now the consciousness of the professional athlete, that how they play and the way they market themselves, including how they dress walking into the arena.

• 21:44Speaker 04

  Sure, sure.

• 21:44Billy Corgan?

  Is part of building the avatar.

• 21:46Speaker 04

  Oh, totally, totally. When they lose, they, they're like, not only did I lose, I'm not going to get that cameo in an Adam Sandler movie now. Because I'm not, I'm not.

• 21:52Billy Corgan?

  But you could also argue losing the right way is part of building the avatar.

• 21:55Speaker 04

  Oh, totally. Well, my grandfather, in 76, he had this Battle of the Network Stars race with.

• 22:00Billy Corgan?

  Tell everyone who your grandfather is, for those who didn't.

• 22:02Speaker 04

  TV's Robert Conrad from Hawaiian Eye, Wild Wild Western, Black Sheep Squadron, bunch of television.

• 22:07Billy Corgan?

  Notorious Hollywood tough guy.

• 22:09Speaker 04

  Hollywood tough guy, some would say hothead. And from millennials, they know him as the cop in Jingle All the Way. Which, which for millennials vastly outshines anything that their parents know from. But he did this, one of the earliest reality, celebrity reality TV things with the Battle of the Network Stars in 76.

• 22:25Billy Corgan?

  Which I used to watch.

• 22:26Speaker 04

  Oh, I mean, there was only three channels, so everyone kind of watched. Everyone loved Battle. But um, it's the hottest thing on TV. But there was a race he had with Gabe Kaplan. And it was-

• 22:38Billy Corgan?

  That sounds like an SNL skit.

• 22:39Speaker 04

  Oh, no, I mean, it was. It was a proto SNL sketch. So there's a, there's a race between he and Gabe Kaplan because they couldn't figure out who was the winner of the last contest. And so Gramps says-

• 22:49Billy Corgan?

  Was it a worked finish?

• 22:51Speaker 04

  Well, that's, it might be. Oh, you know wrestling. It may have been. Well, so to your point, it worked out that Gramps lost this race. Cause so Gramps, who was this athletic guy from the Wawa West, he's considered to be this athlete. And he was, but he says to Gabe Kaplan, you and me are gonna race and the winner of this will win the whole thing. And this is unscripted, Battle of the Network stars, like this is really hot reality TV. And I mean, like Bill Simmons says, it's like his favorite YouTube clip of all time. Gramps ends up losing the race to Gabe Kaplan. Cause Gabe, he doesn't look as athletic as Gramps, but he was a former track star. Gramps is 41, a huge smoker. Gramps gets smoked by Gabe Kaplan. It was this big shocking thing. It would be like Adam Sandler beating The Rock or something, you know, in a something where you're like, really? I didn't, I wouldn't think.

• 23:35Speaker 04

  But to your point about it's better to lose, had my grandfather challenged him, been a bully and won, it would have had a Disney sports movie villain tone to it. But the fact that he lost and the underdog won, the surprising guy that played the nerd on TV one-

• 23:50Billy Corgan?

  That's what makes me think it was a worked.

• 23:53Speaker 04

  Um, Gramps was too mad for it to be a work. He was too mad for it to be a work.

• 23:58Billy Corgan?

  Well, how about this? Was the, was the setup for the winner take all race maybe a work?

• 24:02Speaker 04

  I've, I've heard from someone say that they were the one that said to Gramps, you should suggest a race. So yeah, as you know, the way show is-

• 24:09Billy Corgan?

  The carny in me from wrestling identifies the con.

• 24:12Speaker 04

  There's a producer that's like, Billy, you should go say this at the award show.

• 24:15Billy Corgan?

  Okay. So if people didn't see our first episode, we, we kind of dove into this air of your coming expertise, which is the occult and, and music. Or the occult and culture maybe is a better, better way to say it. So let's start here, the granddaddy of them all, Crowley. Because he's the go to Crowley's influence in music, people being influenced by Crowley in terms of writing music. And of course, there's the great association between Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, even buying Crowley's house and living in Crowley's house.

• 24:53Speaker 04

  Buying his books. I've got a story that's the granddaddy of all rock and the occult stories.

• 24:57Billy Corgan?

  Okay, jump in.

• 24:58Speaker 04

  So the guy that Jimmy Page bought his Crowley books from was a famous Labour Member of Parliament named Tom Dryburgh. Now, Dryburgh, he was Aleister Crowley's anointed successor back in the 1920s, when he was in college. He was also a kind of, he was anointed as a baby by C.W. Ledbetter, who was also an occult leader and kind of Crowley's rival. So, long story short, Dryburgh becomes a Member of Parliament, becomes a spy. He was part of George Orwell's list of 39 people that George Orwell gave the BBC, where he's like, "These guys can't be trusted to do anti-communist propaganda. They're actually fellow travelers or spies."

• 25:39Speaker 04

  And so, long story short, this is really the best actual rock in the occult. It has everything. It has an A-list rock star. So, in 1967, when the Rolling Stones are famously in their "we don't quite know yet what we're gonna do" phase, where the early version of the Stones from 63 to 66 is starting to wear a bit thin.

• 26:01Billy Corgan?

  Is this where they go psychedelic?

• 26:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is where they go psychedelic. They also almost do like Music Hall, the Between the Buttons era of like, "I guess they're gonna have top hats now." Like, it gets a little bit, they're getting lost, and they fire Andrew Lou Goldham. So, Allen Ginsberg wants to introduce Tom Dryburgh to Mick Jagger. And Ginsberg, you know, legends of the counterculture, but also famously like, according to, you know, member of NAMBLA, pedophile, like, you know, some very serious stuff with that. You know that about Allen Ginsberg?

• 26:31Billy Corgan?

  I've heard the stories.

• 26:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, so he.

• 26:33Billy Corgan?

  I actually met Allen Ginsberg, so I at least I. No, but I like putting it out there because in my way of doing business.

• 26:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 26:40Billy Corgan?

  Uh, it helps if I have a three dimensional impression of the person.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  All people are people, yeah, regardless of whatever Hannah stuff they could have to. But um, uh, so Allen Ginsberg wants to introduce Tom Dreiberg to Mick Jagger. And Dreiberg, again, is a spy. He has his own, like, you know, he's Aleister Crowley's successor. He's also later accused.

• 26:59Billy Corgan?

  When you say a successor, what is the?

• 27:01Speaker 04

  So Crowley had wanted him to be the new world teacher, which is this Messiah figure. Uh, like Jiddu Krishnamurti was another one.

• 27:09Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 27:09Speaker 04

  And that was CW Ledbetter, actually, was the one who anointed Krishnamurti to be that. So the idea was essentially that Crowley thought he would be this messianic figure that would usher in the next age of of.

• 27:22Billy Corgan?

  You could argue that he did.

• 27:23Speaker 04

  Totally, yeah, yeah. In his way, with sex, drugs and rock and roll, he did do that. And Tom Dreiberg, he sold his Crowley books to Jimmy Page. In other words, Dreiberg is a member of Parliament, um, friend of Evil One was like, you know, kind of into some freaky stuff. He's a spy. And he goes to Mick Jagger, not unlike your viral clip, talking about you were approached, uh, to, you know, to by whoever. And he goes to Mick Jagger and he goes, we, I'd like you to become a member of Parliament. He goes, you represent the youth, you know, we really want to harness your rock star things. He goes, I believe in the revolution again, thanks to you. He goes, you really, you really brought back my, my like socialist revolutionary instincts. And this is 67 and Mick Jagger's like, well, I don't know if I want to be a politician.

• 28:08Speaker 04

  And and Dreiberg's like, well, you can just be a figurehead. We just need you to be the guy who's, you know, the public face of this stuff. But it's the fact that a guy who is a spy, a guy who has like, I don't know, you know, P word, pedophile ties. Yeah. Dreiberg, a guy who is Crowley's successor, sold his stuff to Jimmy Page. That he approaches a rock star and is like, we want to kind of pull you into this scene.

• 28:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 28:33Speaker 04

  One of Dreiberg's colleagues, I mean, it is, it's a big member, uh, body of colleagues was, at the time was Robert Maxwell. Ghislaine Maxwell's father, that was also one of the British, um, members of Parliament. That was one of his colleagues.

• 28:45Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 28:46Speaker 04

  Jeffrey Epstein's essential father in law. So that could also be a coincidence, but at the same time.

• 28:50Billy Corgan?

  Is it true that the, uh? The father was also Mossad or?

• 28:55Speaker 04

  That well, that's widely considered too. So that's another spy case and Crowley was a Crowley was not only a spy. My, um, my friend Rick Spence, he's a historian. He wrote a book, Aleister Crowley 666 about his spy work. So in other words, there's a lot of spy intrigue. There's a lot of like the ickyest eyes wide shut stuff.

• 29:12Billy Corgan?

  Okay. So let me stop here for a second. So, uh, I don't want to go too deep into it because it's certainly not my Arab expertise, but

• 29:21Billy Corgan?

  there's this kind of constant swirl around, uh, occult behavior, uh, political classes, uh, aberrant sexual deviancy, including pedophilia or pederasty. But what is your general take on that? Is it, is it, is it, is, is it, is it organized in your mind? Or is it just power likes darkness because there's some sort of connective tissue there? You know, because what people will say is, and it's, it's similar to the rock argument. It's like, well, yeah, you give, you give people a bunch of money and a bunch of power, they're going to go crazy. It doesn't mean they're, they're worshiping Satan.

• 30:05Billy Corgan?

  It just means they just get into some freaky stuff. Well, that seems to be also partially what people are still trying to sort out with, with the P Diddy cases.

• 30:15Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 30:16Billy Corgan?

  Because, because invariably, and I have been in these situations, I have watched where incredibly powerful people seem to be above the law.

• 30:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 30:24Billy Corgan?

  Well, and that just as a sort of an emotional comment, that's a weird place to be when you realize you're hanging out with somebody who doesn't play by any rules.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  Right.

• 30:33Billy Corgan?

  Including the speed limit.

• 30:35Speaker 04

  Well, that's, that's a big question. I think we can answer a lot of it or some of it.

• 30:38Billy Corgan?

  That's what you're here to answer.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  No, I'm here to answer all the big questions. Um, the, uh, first of all, the Diddy thing. So like, we talked about that and I, I talked to some people that know Hollywood and they were, and they said to me like, you're absolutely right in terms of, the purpose of, of certain kinds of elite sex parties and, and whatnot. It isn't that celebrities have a hard time getting people, getting women, getting boys. It's the fact that having a relationship or, uh, flings with people and not having. Uh, extracted from you, whatever the celebrity told them, I'm gonna introduce you to my manager. I want to read your script. Having the blackmail of having slept with someone and then that person coming back to haunt you. Those parties serve a very valuable purpose.

• 31:19Billy Corgan?

  But you, but, but I'm talking about the, the, the phase between, let's call it crazy behavior over here. Occult weirdness, celebrity fame, models, billionaires.

• 31:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 31:31Billy Corgan?

  And I, I've run enough in those circles to know the vibe.

• 31:34Speaker 04

  Right.

• 31:35Billy Corgan?

  And, and where the government sort of seems to get involved is, what is your, what is your take on that?

• 31:42Speaker 04

  I think, I think there is something there. I, I think that even going back a few years ago, with the QAnon stuff, as crazy as a lot of it was, there were accusations Democrats could have made back to Republicans about high ranking Republican politicians who were famously pedophiles or, and caught up in certain stuff. And the fact that Democrats never thought to answer back those accusations.

• 32:04Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 32:05Speaker 04

  To like, the Dennis Hastert thing from 2006, remember that?

• 32:09Billy Corgan?

  Of course, yeah.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  So it's like, he was three heartbeats away from the presidency. At any point during the QAnon thing, Democrats could have pointed back to Republicans and said, you accuse us of being pedophiles. The Speaker of the House was a convicted pedophile and.

• 32:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it was notoriously absent, certain facts and evidence that somehow didn't seem to make it into the, into the public.

• 32:29Speaker 04

  Into the, into the conversation. So that to me, and this is just my, what I infer from this. The fact that they never thought to like, to bring up Hastert being in jail for pedophilia and being three heartbeats away from the presidency indicated that it's like, it's better off for everybody if we actually just don't start opening these doors and.

• 32:48Billy Corgan?

  Well, that's very ob, sorry, there's very obvious to me that there's sort of a gentleman's agreement that there's things that they don't, they, they'll, they'll lob whatever, uh, mental hand grenades they want to lob, but they won't lob those grenades.

• 33:00Speaker 04

  Or another one, Madison Cawthorn, remember him from a few years ago? Madison Cawthorn.

• 33:04Billy Corgan?

  He came out and said, yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 04

  And he's like, there's like, orgies and sex parties and he, he was elected a congressman. I believe he was, uh, wheelchair bound and handicapped. And, uh, you know, he was like, uh, he's like, yeah, there's all these parties I get invited to.

• 33:17Billy Corgan?

  Gone.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  Immediately. Not only that, no one, no one brings him up. No one makes fun of him. He is just memory.

• 33:23Billy Corgan?

  No, he was memory old.

• 33:24Speaker 04

  So as you know, just the fact that some things happen and some things aren't brought up. And some people aren't even brought up again as someone to kick.

• 33:31Billy Corgan?

  But QAnon, sorry, but QAnon is a perfect example where it was so obvious to me from my sideline that it was, was some sort of government op.

• 33:39Speaker 04

  In, in op in terms of?

• 33:41Billy Corgan?

  It was all, it was all counter intel. It was, there was, there was, there were, it was, it was sprinkled with enough kernels of truth that it would hold some fascination, but it was, it was, it was not to get to any truth. It was actually to pull everyone away from, from something that, and, and when I see those things happening, at least again from my own perspective, I, I, I don't know what the purpose is. I just know it's happening.

• 34:03Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:03Billy Corgan?

  Well, I, I'm sorry. I once said something. I was, I was invited to a, a Nantucket Symposium where they bring a bunch of people in to talk.

• 34:13Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 34:14Billy Corgan?

  And I can't think of the gentleman's name. Casey Nystat, Nystat? He was on CNN for a heartbeat. He was a, he was a social media, you, early YouTuber. Gained a lot of traction. CNN gave him a huge contract. He'd just gotten this big contract.

• 34:27Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 34:28Billy Corgan?

  And he was brought in to, um, talk to me.

• 34:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:31Billy Corgan?

  In public, in a, in a, in a former church or a current church.

• 34:34Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 34:35Billy Corgan?

  And who's sitting in the front row, but Norman Lear, arguably the greatest television maker.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 34:40Billy Corgan?

  Ever. And, um, and during the thing, uh, and, and, uh, I said to Casey before the interview, you know, you can ask me whatever you want. It was ostensibly a conversation about culture. And I think there might have been the video of the interview if people want to check it out. And the entire interview was him going after me.

• 34:57Speaker 04

  Really?

• 34:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Not in an overtly aggressive way, but in a way of calling me out about government conspiracies and things like that. And I thought, this is very strange, right? This is classic. And I've been through it with the New York Times and everywhere else. So suddenly I find myself in a situation. Now I'm on trial.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:12Billy Corgan?

  With Norman Lear sitting in the front row.

• 35:14Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:15Billy Corgan?

  And the key moment in the conversation that at least that I remember, and again, this is a full church in the middle of the day in Nantucket and I've been flown in to talk.

• 35:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:24Billy Corgan?

  Why me? Why they picked me out of the lineup? Okay, don't know. And this is a few years back. It wasn't like now where I'm sort of getting a lot of attention. Okay, so the key moment says, you know, it's a lot of these, well, like if I was playing contrarian with you, well, how do you know?

• 35:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:41Billy Corgan?

  How do you know he was Crowley's successor? How do you know this? And how do you know that he gave Jimmy Page those books?

• 35:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:46Billy Corgan?

  Right, playing that one.

• 35:47Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 35:48Billy Corgan?

  So suddenly I'm being kind of somewhat grilled.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:51Billy Corgan?

  With this August.

• 35:52Speaker 04

  Showing footnotes in books and stuff like that.

• 35:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, we're not talking about writing songs. We're talking about like, how do you account for your contrarian opinions in public?

• 36:01Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:01Billy Corgan?

  And how do you know these things? And I, and I, and I reached for analogy and somehow it landed. And I said, well, you know, sometimes when they, when they examine the stars, they know that a star is there, but they can't see it.

• 36:14Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:15Billy Corgan?

  And how do they know it's there? Because they see its effect, gravitational effect on the other stars.

• 36:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:20Billy Corgan?

  And I said, so I know enough behind the wizard's curtain to see, I can see the gravity pulling things left and right. I don't have to see the source of the gravitational pull to know it's there.

• 36:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:30Billy Corgan?

  Total silence in the crowd, which is how I knew it landed.

• 36:33Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:33Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so after that, who pulls me aside but Norman Lear, he's now passed away, God bless him.

• 36:39Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 36:39Billy Corgan?

  And he says, we need to have a conversation. And he said, when you come to LA next, let's get, get together and have lunch. I want to sort of have a real conversation with you about these things that you're poking at.

• 36:52Speaker 04

  Sure, sure.

• 36:52Billy Corgan?

  And my wife for years said, you really should. And I said, no, I know what that conversation is.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  And what was it?

• 36:58Billy Corgan?

  Well, in my estimation, and God bless Norman Lear, was, was to kind of get me back in line. And I don't mean knock me into line.

• 37:06Speaker 04

  For like.

• 37:06Billy Corgan?

  It's like, look, kid, yes and no.

• 37:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 37:09Billy Corgan?

  I see what you're saying, but the world doesn't totally operate this way. Because it's my contention that people at the highest court of powers are pretty aware of how the game runs.

• 37:18Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 37:18Billy Corgan?

  These are not stupid people. They're in fact a lot smarter than I am.

• 37:22Speaker 04

  They're very smart people, yeah.

• 37:22Billy Corgan?

  So why are they willing, back to the avatar, why are they willing to let one narrative go on in public while behind the scenes they're kind of running this other game?

• 37:30Speaker 04

  Right.

• 37:30Billy Corgan?

  That's the crux of what I'm sort of after and where, you know, you and I can play the parlor game about this person in this period of time.

• 37:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 37:37Billy Corgan?

  But I think the bigger conversation, I think part of what drives you is, is, is why are we having two different stories?

• 37:44Speaker 04

  Right.

• 37:44Billy Corgan?

  And when most of the American public in particular, at least the public in the West, is fully aware there is another story.

• 37:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 37:52Billy Corgan?

  Why are we willing to accept and not try to try to bring the two stories together and kind of agree on, now, of course, the thing people say is a common set of facts. Well, when I hear that, that's when I want to run.

• 38:03Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 38:03Billy Corgan?

  Because that's just another mechanism of control because who decides what facts are?

• 38:08Speaker 04

  Right. Well, this just gets into something you and I talked about the first time, I think, which is the Cosby story, where it's like, I don't think anything woke people up to the fact that a lot of entertainment isn't what it seems like. America's dad in the 80s, the guy that in 1983, if you wanted to sell something to the American public, you got Bill Cosby to sell Jell-O Pops or whatever. He was that trusted to find out later that he was abusing women, drugging them, raping them, and that people kind of knew about it. Or like, you could make jokes about it on Tina Fey's 30 Rock. It was that kind of like, we know about it, we can't do anything about it. That happened before QAnon, but when people are like, well, why are people questioning whether all these people in Hollywood or the music industry are actually these dark figures? Well, if you take America's

• 38:51Speaker 04

  sitcom dad and you expose him later, or it's revealed that he's not at all in this kind of like, yeah.

• 38:59Billy Corgan?

  So play the game here because I'm still after the kind of, is there a connection between government entities and, and let's call it the, the, the swirl of culture?

• 39:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:08Billy Corgan?

  If, if, let's use Mr. Cosby as an example.

• 39:11Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:12Billy Corgan?

  If it was known, and again, I don't know enough about the facts of the case, but obviously he was convicted.

• 39:19Billy Corgan?

  If it was known that he was engaged in unsundry behavior.

• 39:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:25Billy Corgan?

  Does somebody somewhere along the way decide to sort of basically flip the switch and say, okay, and why would they flip the switch?

• 39:30Speaker 04

  And let him do that until a certain point.

• 39:33Billy Corgan?

  That's where people get into the sort of the P. Diddy aspect of it. That's part of the crux of the Epstein story.

• 39:39Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:39Billy Corgan?

  Was if there was all this understanding and knowledge, why does it go on and then why does it stop going on?

• 39:45Speaker 04

  Right. No, I think there is something to that. And it's a question of why does the Department of Justice decide that month to finally rein in Sean Combs? Why did they decide to finally arrest and go after Jeffrey Epstein that month?

• 40:00Speaker 04

  Did they have something on some very powerful figure that was just like, you know, we should probably finally rein this in now? I think, yeah, I think that's the case.

• 40:08Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so would your theory be that it's governmental? Or is it just convenient because it's?

• 40:16Speaker 04

  It's governmental. In the case of Diddy, were there certain public figures that were then at that month about to be in the public eye a lot more and they probably wanted to go?

• 40:26Billy Corgan?

  Is it where they burned the lower person in the pyramid to almost create a fire break?

• 40:32Speaker 04

  No, I think in the case of Diddy, I think you had him having those parties for 20 years. I mean, you talked about like everyone, you know, you've gone to adjacent parties where you're not necessarily going to all those rooms, but it's a Puff Daddy party from the 90s. It's a very popular thing. Were there current politicians or figures who are no doubt at those parties that in September of 2024 or August of 2024, were probably very concerned that over the past 20 years, they were definitely at some of those parties, not necessarily engaged in anything like sordid, but they were at them and could that have wrecked their political career?

• 41:05Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I see.

• 41:05Speaker 04

  If through the vast Sean Combs, you know.

• 41:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think we're saying the same thing. It's like, does somebody say, this is getting too close, so now we have to?

• 41:15Speaker 04

  Yes, I think obviously in the Sean Combs, why the Department of Justice at the time chose to raid his place in September of 2024, two months before an election, I think is. Pretty obvious, or not obvious. I think you can make a great case for why they chose two months before an election to make sure there were absolutely no cameras.

• 41:34Billy Corgan?

  So do you believe there's an independent apparatus that exists within the federal government agencies that operates on their own volition?

• 41:45Speaker 04

  I mean, there's

• 41:46Billy Corgan?

  Or are there multiple, I mean, like, I think that's where most people get lost.

• 41:50Speaker 04

  Right.

• 41:51Billy Corgan?

  And I don't certainly have any particular information, which is,

• 41:55Billy Corgan?

  if there's a man, or a woman, or people behind the curtain, well, even if they're directing people, how do they direct them?

• 42:02Speaker 04

  That's a very good question about networks and how that works. I think there are informal networks. This is my take. And I don't claim to be too knowledgeable on this, but I think that the analogy is to the entertainment industry, where someone could be a huge, huge film mogul, and could that person make a few phone calls that would end the career, or do something, someone in the music business, despite the fact that the person making the call is in film? Of course, because they're a big, big player in the general network.

• 42:28Billy Corgan?

  See.

• 42:29Speaker 04

  So I think, could there be someone who isn't necessarily even American, but they're a big enough person, media-wise, government-wise, that they can affect one of these government agencies? Like, of course. That's the thing. You were in Nantucket. All elites, at the highest level, know each other, and if not get along, they'll kind of know each other. So it's not

• 42:47Billy Corgan?

  That's what I'm trying to say is, is occasionally I get dragged into this world. I chose to get out of that world early 2000s, but I get kind of dragged back occasionally. In this case, the Nantucket thing somewhat sort of innocently, right?

• 43:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 43:01Billy Corgan?

  Like, why are they calling me out of the blue? Why do they want me to come to this thing? Why am I onstage in front of a live crowd with this person who suddenly decides to kind of go at me about issues which are like, in my mind, I wasn't, my take, and because I'm sort of a fluid personality, was, okay, if this is what you want to get into here, that's fine. I have nothing to be afraid of.

• 43:24Speaker 04

  Right. Well, this gets into something we haven't talked about with my family background. So half my family, well, on both sides, you have Hollywood, but on one side of my family, I have relatives, I spent a few years growing up on Cape Cod.

• 43:35Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 43:35Speaker 04

  So I grew up on Martha's Vineyard for a few years.

• 43:37Billy Corgan?

  So you know that crowd.

• 43:38Speaker 04

  I know that crowd. And so this is the other side of my interest, is that as a boy, you would see who would vacation on Martha's Vineyard. And you just know that anyone who was important in politics or the media, they all hung out there. And so, again, you were on Nantucket, the sister island to Montez Vineyard. It's a very important network where anybody who's anybody informally make decisions or have just conversations about like, what do we think about this politician? What do you think about that guy? So by even bringing you to Nantucket, that is like a hub for where certain kinds of important people do this sort of thing.

• 44:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 44:11Speaker 04

  So it doesn't surprise me that like, on a more mundane level, you may have ticked off someone in that circle who's like, who is this guy? Let's get, let's get Billy Corgan out here to talk about this. I mean, they didn't, you know, they didn't bring you to Middle America or to Florida or even Manhattan. You're in essentially the very wealthy elites playground when you were asked to go to Nantucket.

• 44:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 44:32Speaker 04

  You were, you look at where you were brought. So that I know as a boy on the Vineyard is like, especially in the summer. And it's not necessarily nefarious, it's just wealthy people like to know other wealthy people.

• 44:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 44:43Speaker 04

  But that's where stuff shakes down. So that always intrigued me. It's like, what are the, what's the actual economics of this? What is the actual network of this? But yeah, the Vineyard Nantucket, that's, that's ground zero.

• 44:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I guess, I guess the, the question that can't be answered is how much of an organizing influence is there actually? You know, because the next question I want to get into is, is with pop music and, and I certainly gained some traction by pointing out that pop had more connectivity to Satanism than rock music.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:12Billy Corgan?

  Of course, that got a few headlines and I'm not surprised by that part of it. But when you look at the pop music landscape, let's say over the last 10 to 15 years, when it's been incredibly dominant, I mean, it's almost been head, head.

• 45:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:26Billy Corgan?

  What's the word? Hegemonic, you know what I mean? It's like, it's almost so ridiculous. And in fact, there continues to be, even as we sit here and tape today, there continues to be a true schism in the music business between pop's alleged influence and yet rock's dominance as a ticket seller.

• 45:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:44Billy Corgan?

  And it seems very strange to me that there seems to be a vast disconnect between the two entities. And in my estimation, there's this kind of inward power struggle going on.

• 45:54Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:55Billy Corgan?

  Because this pop continues to try to maintain its hegemonic.

• 45:58Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:58Billy Corgan?

  Kind of control over the culture.

• 46:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 46:01Billy Corgan?

  And now that rock's been marginalized really for the first time in the history of rock and roll, the last 15, 20 years, you could argue rock's been at its weakest point since Elvis showed up.

• 46:13Billy Corgan?

  What do you see in that landscape in terms of the occult? And you know, because you know, we've all seen the videos where people are holding the triangles. I referred to in our last interview, but what do you see?

• 46:22Speaker 04

  I think it's a couple of things. On the one hand, some people do it cynically in the sense that they understand if we throw in some occult symbols and throw in some Freemason stuff, this is going to gain, this is going to get traction. So on some level-

• 46:36Billy Corgan?

  Attraction with who?

• 46:38Speaker 04

  With, with people who want to read into it and try to figure out, is this possible?

• 46:42Billy Corgan?

  You think it's a parlor fun game or you think they're actually speaking?

• 46:44Speaker 04

  Some of them, some of them I think do it for real, but some of them know at this point that if you do put these symbols in videos, it's going to get eyeballs on it.

• 46:51Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 46:52Speaker 04

  There's, some are just doing it because they know, yeah.

• 46:54Billy Corgan?

  But I'm saying, do you delineate between somebody being edgy and somebody signaling?

• 46:58Speaker 04

  You, you always, you can't always know. Some of them I do, I do think obviously signal. I was, I was talking to a buddy last week and he was telling me about like some of these young rappers and stuff. And he was telling me the extent to which, uh, you know, in pop music, these guys are into the occult. And they're talking deep occult history figures like Manly P. Hall and all this stuff. And I'm like, these are like rappers who are into Manly P. Hall and not just Alice or Crowley. And also just the popularity now, he was telling me of like sex rituals and sex magic and stuff. And that's, that's stuff that goes all the way back to the Bible and the New Testament. When they talk about temple prostitutes, the women that are at the temple for spiritual reasons, where you would, you would have a relationship with them, but it's, it's for a mystical

• 47:41Speaker 04

  or spiritual reason that you're trying to do it. He's talking about how popular that is with very, very young people and even with some pop stars. So, uh, there, that is that, there is that undercurrent. Really quick, a friend of mine, Rick Spence, he, I asked him like, when are you going to do an episode on? He has this podcast called Strange As It Seems that covers a lot of this stuff. And I said, when are you going to do a Jeffrey Epstein episode? And what he says, he goes, he says, I'm just going to put Jeffrey Epstein under my sex magic episode. In other words, he just filed him under people who use sex ritualistically in a kind of eyes wide shut sort of way.

• 48:16Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 48:17Speaker 04

  So in other words, that was a long way of saying, um, uh, it's multifaceted. Some of them do it earnestly to signal. Some of them do it as a marketing ploy, but it's like omnipresent in, in, in almost every aspect.

• 48:31Billy Corgan?

  What would you akin that to is to say? You know, people talk about a fourth turning. Are we in a particular moment in time? If you believe in the spiritual battle, is the devil winning? Like, what is? How do you read all that?

• 48:43Speaker 04

  Um, it, it, it works for them in the sense of like, a lot of them, they, they get into the occult. They, they do rituals and it coincides with their success. And so they, they, the more they do it, uh, it, it, it, it's, it's popular. It works for them. Also, I think there's also probably a demonic aspect in terms of, uh, they're just naturally attracted to it for lurid spiritual reasons. But I think it's, it also just works for them.

• 49:09Billy Corgan?

  So does somebody watching this on their iPad somewhere, um, that may be rolling their eyes. What would you point to to say to them? This is, this is in your estimation, evidence hiding in plain sight?

• 49:22Speaker 04

  Well, I would say this, there's a quote I keep meaning to bring up, but I never do. And one of my main interests in wanting to do this project was, um, someone I brought up on the Tucker Carlson Show, um, Current 93, which I'm sure all Tucker Carlson, uh, audience members are familiar with, Current 93. But I brought up, uh, I meant to bring up this quote by David Tibet, who was friends with Genesis Peoria. You had great things to say about in terms of his influence as an artist. And David Tibet, uh, he's like more of a gnostic, but he's like, you know, evil spirit, evil entities, demons are real. He goes, I believe in like a literal Satan. He goes, and of course, some of this, people could dismiss it as mere drug use or whatever. But David Tibet is not a Christian. He's not Jewish. He's, he's not Muslim. He's, he's just someone who's dabbled in these things.

• 50:05Speaker 04

  And he's part of a very influential or, you know, um, industrial, not even industrial, but you know.

• 50:11Billy Corgan?

  It's hard to quantify their music.

• 50:13Speaker 04

  What if we spend the next hour trying to quantify Goth, Billy? The next hour, we just derailed it and we're just trying to figure out the exact definition of Goth. No, but, uh, but someone like David Tibet or Stash Kozowski, who I talked to you about, talking about, uh, the demonic evil entities. And they're doing so in a way as an occultist, not as someone who is talking about.

• 50:34Billy Corgan?

  I see. But I'm saying is to the punters in the crowd, what would, what do you point to in popular culture that says this? This to me is evidence in plain sight that what I'm talking about isn't just theoretical.

• 50:46Speaker 04

  What's that quote about one of those, this architect where he says, if you want to see my work, just look around. Every aspect of pop culture or pop music does this stuff. Like, it's like saying, what aspect of American pop culture strikes you?

• 50:59Billy Corgan?

  But when we look back at clips of the Mamas and Papas, they weren't throwing triangles. They weren't wearing Freemason garb like I have on stage. I mean, what do you, what do you akin it to? And what do you want people to see in culture that you do? If you, if to you, it's so obvious, it's painfully obvious. And you're a tour guide here. Give people a few things that you can point out so that they can, they can jump down their own rabbit hole.

• 51:20Speaker 04

  Sacred geometry in Ariana Grande videos, Carrie Patey, Carrie Pateys. Katy Perry's, that's her wrestling name. Katy Perry's, you know, Egyptianology and self-conscious Illuminati symbols. You know, there's even like witch light things that like, you know, Taylor Swift has done some like vaguely witchy videos. Nothing to a cult, but just, you know, kind of playing with this idea of the pop, which every artist does it or has some version of it, generally speaking, that's in the pop sphere to, to try to pinpoint any one of them. But those are just three examples, like saying, name something sexually suggestive in pop. It's like, I don't know.

• 52:03Billy Corgan?

  No, I'm just, because, because it's not, I'm, I'm, I'm in the crowd that knows these things to be true.

• 52:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 52:09Billy Corgan?

  For me.

• 52:10Speaker 04

  Right.

• 52:10Billy Corgan?

  But I know there's also an element that sort of doesn't get it because they say, well, what's, what's the big deal?

• 52:16Speaker 04

  Right.

• 52:17Billy Corgan?

  Or, or, yeah, you can watch some YouTube video about somebody throwing up triangles. But it doesn't mean anything to me. In essence, you know, the, the average American, rightly so, says, how does this have any effect on the way I see the world or, or my life? And I think, I don't want to make the case for you, but in, in my case, I'd like to say, you know, you should at least be aware of the influence of these things.

• 52:42Speaker 04

  Right.

• 52:42Billy Corgan?

  And even if you don't want to get into the spiritual battle quotient of it all, you should be aware that these things have an influence. And as someone who, who believes in.

• 52:53Billy Corgan?

  The greatest, what do you call it, not antiseptic, the greatest antibiotic or whatever is light, disinfectant.

• 53:00Speaker 04

  Disinfectant.

• 53:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I'm a big believer that light is where we're all going.

• 53:04Speaker 04

  What would you say is the biggest, like, if you were to answer the question, what would you say in terms of the influence of this on pop and its effect, or even as an artist or having been a legend in this sphere? What have you seen where you're like, I've seen this firsthand in terms of the influence this has on people?

• 53:20Billy Corgan?

  Well, I take it in a slightly different direction because the symbiology to me is pretty obvious, but I also think it's pretty ham-fisted. Most people are not operating in a sophisticated way when they deal with the symbiology. They're doing kind of like spooky 101.

• 53:33Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 53:34Billy Corgan?

  I tend to go down this particular rabbit hole and it might illuminate what I was trying to say about, what I said, you know, that pop has more connection to Satanism than rock does at this particular moment in time.

• 53:46Billy Corgan?

  When you, it's the classic Hollywood story, you know, Mary Jane gets off the bus in 1934 with, you know, you know, a twig of hay in her mouth. And two years later, she's, she's doing sex shows for Hollywood execs and she never gets her Hollywood dream. You know, that's a tale often told.

• 54:04Speaker 04

  Paul Strater did a career at this.

• 54:05Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so it's, I don't know, but that's beyond my knowledge base, but

• 54:12Billy Corgan?

  the exploitation of innocence or the exploitation of the dream is part and parcel to what this town operates on.

• 54:21Billy Corgan?

  When I see a mechanism or, sorry, when I see a system built up that is not that dissimilar than porn, that is about exploiting human capital

• 54:32Speaker 04

  Right.

• 54:32Billy Corgan?

  and narrowing and narrowing the definition of what makes something popular.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 54:37Billy Corgan?

  So it can be commoditized. That to me is the heart of evil because what you're doing is you're giving people binary choices which aren't binary choices at all.

• 54:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 54:47Billy Corgan?

  Hey, you can get back on the bus to Kansas or you can do it this way. This is the way that it's done. And I've seen a systemizing or a system put in place in the last 20 to 25 years that was already there and existed in Hollywood, but it's actually publicly commoditized now.

• 55:03Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:04Billy Corgan?

  And, and if you want to, I don't want to name names because it'll turn into some sort of personality battle and it's not. What I see is these artists are given binary choices and as the choices narrow, they become more and more pulled into the dark sphere of influence.

• 55:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:21Billy Corgan?

  Because that's the best way to get business done.

• 55:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:24Billy Corgan?

  They may not necessarily consciously recognize the energies that they're playing with and also realize how they're being exploited.

• 55:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:31Billy Corgan?

  So that exploitation is at the heart of my satanic charge.

• 55:35Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:36Billy Corgan?

  Because if you take something pure and beautiful and wonderful, and most people who are incredibly talented have a certain purity to them.

• 55:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:44Billy Corgan?

  You could even argue a divine spark that attracts millions to them. The exploitation of that is at the heart of, to me, the exploitation of human capital is at the heart of what the devil is about.

• 55:57Speaker 04

  Right. I agree with, I think with.

• 55:59Billy Corgan?

  Does that make sense?

• 56:00Speaker 04

  No, it does. And you brought up some things I've thought about and you articulated very well. David Bowie once said, this is during David Bowie's peak, 1976 LA meltdown, where, you know, he was having people, a witch do an exorcism on his pool and stuff when he lived on Doheny.

• 56:16Billy Corgan?

  But didn't a lot of that have to do with cocaine though, too?

• 56:19Speaker 04

  Yes, yeah. But as Marxists would say, it's a dialectic.

• 56:25Speaker 04

  But, yeah, he was, you know, he said Los Angeles is the worst horror movie he's ever seen, Hollywood was. And I think one of the key things, to your point about binaries, about Los Angeles, that takes a while for people to understand, but I think is true to what you said about pornography versus Hollywood, is that one of Hollywood's, its idea of glam, which by the way, the concept of glam is an occult concept. It goes back to the idea of occultism and casting the glamour, casting a spell over the eyes of something that isn't real. No, glam comes from the occult. It's essentially a visual spell and making you think something's real when it's not. That's what glam comes from.

• 57:02Billy Corgan?

  But see, the true spirit of glam is fun.

• 57:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, glam can be fun.

• 57:07Billy Corgan?

  In terms of how it's being expressed in the arts.

• 57:09Speaker 04

  Right, right. But I'm saying it's origin. And with Los Angeles and Hollywood, the best spell there is, in a way, deals with the divining line between the valley and LA proper. Where it's like, to your point about pornography, in LA, they give you this idea that on the north side of LA is the valley, it's seedy, it's underbelly, we exploit people. But this is Hollywood, where we don't do that. Where this is, where you can take your clothes off on camera, but this is good. It isn't porn when you do it with us. And that whole thing, that whole binary, especially as Hollywood struggles and someone would say dissolves, it's, the binary is being shown to be a false one, where it's actually, in my opinion, all kind of the same industry. And if you remove the Hollywood hills, and you just had a huge flat land between the

• 57:53Speaker 04

  valley all the way to South Bay, people would understand this is all more or less dealing with the same concepts and dealing with similar kinds of exploitation. But what Hollywood does is they like to say, well, that's the seedy, that's pornography. We don't do pornography because you're working with a European director. And we don't, but that's, that's my main thing. That's, that's the main Lynchian take I have on LA, is that the border of the Hollywood hills is a literal metaphor for how people don't see this is all kind of the same industry. The seedy stuff, the North Hollywood stuff, the porn stuff, the glam stuff.

• 58:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 58:26Speaker 04

  It's the entourage stuff. It's actually all the same business. Don't, don't try to separate it.

• 58:30Billy Corgan?

  Yes, I mean, it's certainly a town built on exploitation. I mean, that's at the heart of it. And the argument is, well, you know, it's Faustian.

• 58:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 58:40Billy Corgan?

  You know, in exchange for this thing that only you have, you, the star, you get, you know, riches beyond your wildest dreams, you get immortality, which is, goes back to the NFL player I was talking about. He, he's literally talking in terms of immortality, why he's still playing.

• 58:57Speaker 04

  Let's win, let's win two playoff games. Really quick, though, about Aleister Crowley, do you know what one of Aleister Crowley's side jobs was? He was a pop music manager for a girl group.

• 59:09Billy Corgan?

  Okay, that's a new one to me.

• 59:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, but doesn't that, is that not-

• 59:11Billy Corgan?

  What was the girl group?

• 59:12Speaker 04

  I don't know what they're called, but they were, there was like-

• 59:13Billy Corgan?

  He wasn't a very good manager then.

• 59:15Speaker 04

  No, it was four or five women that he, that he managed. But does that not make sense to you that Aleister Crowley was also, was also a manager? That he was literally-

• 59:22Billy Corgan?

  Well, Kim Fowley notoriously, you know, uh, uh, managed the runaways and exploited the runways. And I actually had a run in once with Kim Fowley where he spent two hours trying to seduce me into his world. It was very interesting.

• 59:35Speaker 04

  Now see, now that should be a movie. That's, that's the Paul Schrader movie I wanted.

• 59:39Billy Corgan?

  We're not there yet. Um, what do you think, uh, and this gained some traction from our first interview. My assertion that pop, of course, is, is been, you know, dominant in, in, in, in the cultural art in America on the musical side of the equation for at least the last 20 years. But my assertion also that don't people find it strange that rock, which has been the dominant social changing force of the 20th century, has been essentially sidelined? And my argument is on purpose.

• 1:00:11Speaker 04

  I think-

• 1:00:12Billy Corgan?

  Am I, am I being, sorry, there's a, there's a part of me, am I being, am I, am I being a, an aging rock star who's complaining about a changing of the guard? Or, or is there validity to that assertion?

• 1:00:24Speaker 04

  There, there's validity to it on a couple of levels, but the main one I think you could also look at is economic, where to, to, to swap it out for pop, where the pop star does not write their own music, to undo the Dylan change from the 60s, where it's assumed on some level that this person is also the talent that's doing this thing.

• 1:00:44Billy Corgan?

  It was also critical to the, to the business.

• 1:00:46Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 1:00:47Billy Corgan?

  Model, that you had to believe the artist was singing their song.

• 1:00:50Speaker 04

  Right, I wrote this, this is coming from experience. And however, as you know, we're talking about wrestling, however much that could be shtick at some point. It's like, my grandfather also was the publisher for The Monkees. And The Monkees at the time, their whole thing was they're not writing their own songs. This is fake.

• 1:01:03Billy Corgan?

  Well, they're, The Monkees Rebellion and, and, um, you know, uh, Mickey Dolan sat in that very chair and we talked about it. The Monkees Rebellion was about-

• 1:01:13Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:13Billy Corgan?

  Taking, you know, taking back the, the power that they perceived that they had.

• 1:01:17Speaker 04

  Well, the only, my dad was, the only movie premiere my dad's ever gone to was The Monkees movie Head from 68. That is the only movie premiere. It's a very avant garde, Goddardian.

• 1:01:27Billy Corgan?

  Mickey Dolan's and I talked about Head for about 20 to 25 minutes. I think much to his irritation. Well, there's a book written about head. I don't know if you've seen it about head being a cultural watershed moment that the Monkees basically made a movie making fun of the Monkees while they were still the Monkees.

• 1:01:42Speaker 04

  I met a movie.

• 1:01:43Billy Corgan?

  And it's a long book about it. And so I wanted to get Mickey's take because obviously he was there.

• 1:01:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:01:48Billy Corgan?

  And he found it kind of almost overly wrought and overly intellectualizing the Monkees thing, which is, I guess, hard to do because it's thoroughly been, it's certainly been overexamined.

• 1:01:59Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:01:59Billy Corgan?

  But I think it's actually been underexamined because the Monkees become the parable of what's to come.

• 1:02:04Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:02:04Billy Corgan?

  The Monkees, the Monkees are not the warning of what to avoid.

• 1:02:08Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:02:08Billy Corgan?

  Because if you stop, if you stop the clock in 1966 and say, take your pick, The Beatles or The Monkees, you'd say The Beatles win every time, but The Monkees end up being the model that comes in.

• 1:02:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:02:20Billy Corgan?

  We don't have 20 Beatles now.

• 1:02:22Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:02:22Billy Corgan?

  But we have 20 Monkees.

• 1:02:23Speaker 04

  There's 20,000 Monkees.

• 1:02:24Billy Corgan?

  Okay, sure.

• 1:02:26Speaker 04

  But no, that, that's, that's, I like that point. That's head as a precursor to modern pop. And to your point, to your question with Mickey Dolan's, it's easier to control the group when the talent, not to say that a lot of pop stars don't have a lot of talent, a lot of them are showcase that have been doing it since they were kids, but they're not, they're not writing the material. It's different from them in a lot of ways, being a full fledged artist. This is a very raucous take, but, but it's easier from the, from the standpoint of the label to shuffle people around when the talent requirement is much lower.

• 1:03:01Billy Corgan?

  So you'd argue it's partially an economic drive?

• 1:03:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. But I think, what do you think? A spiritual component, a?

• 1:03:08Billy Corgan?

  I, I, I think, and I will say it overtly, I think that rock has been purposely dialed down in the culture.

• 1:03:17Speaker 04

  When would you say that began? In the 2000s?

• 1:03:20Billy Corgan?

  Late 90s. I think the first, and again, this gets wizard behind the curtain, right? Somebody's going to say, well, how do you know? Or who was the wizard behind the curtain? All I know is I saw the gravity shift. Okay. If you were at MTV or around MTV 1997, 98, suddenly they decided rock was out.

• 1:03:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:03:40Billy Corgan?

  When rock was still.

• 1:03:42Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:03:42Billy Corgan?

  Very, very high up in the thing. And it was replaced by rap.

• 1:03:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:03:47Billy Corgan?

  They immediately changed the way they their standards and practices immediately shifted.

• 1:03:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:03:52Billy Corgan?

  So now that things that weren't allowed were suddenly allowed, people were waving guns. Okay, so some people assert that the CIA was involved in all that again above my pay grade. But I saw it happen. I did witness it happen. Okay.

• 1:04:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:04:08Billy Corgan?

  Uh, and of course, great music came out of it. So it's not like it's not a barren wasteland where something was pushed in that replaced something. Qualitative things and great artists came in, but there was this overt shift. I saw it happen.

• 1:04:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:04:22Billy Corgan?

  And then now, as you pointed out, rap is seems to be waning in terms of its cultural influence.

• 1:04:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:04:28Billy Corgan?

  Pop is completely dominant. Rock is is is probably the most dominant ticket selling thing in in the Western world. And yet there's almost no representation of rock in culture.

• 1:04:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:04:41Billy Corgan?

  So why do we have that schism? I think they purposely dialed down the ability of rock stars to have a voice in the culture.

• 1:04:48Speaker 04

  Well, that stuff does go on to your point.

• 1:04:50Billy Corgan?

  Or, sorry, dot, dot, dot, or or those who exist within the ecosystem are basically, you know, they they know their color between the lines, so they don't have to worry about.

• 1:05:00Speaker 04

  Well, and that's and that's, I mean, we should have you should have you, me and Mickey do it. Let's talk about this and that's that's exactly what head is about.

• 1:05:08Speaker 04

  You you know about the story of the eighties biggest band and their CIA backing. Do you know about this?

• 1:05:14Billy Corgan?

  After you.

• 1:05:15Speaker 04

  Okay, so it's it's Miles Copeland, Jr., the father of Miles Copeland, the third, the manager of the police and the drummer Stuart Copeland of the police. So Miles Copeland, Jr., famously was like there at the beginning of the CIA. He's also one of the early contributors to National Review. Which Murray Rothbard, who's famously like National Review was started with CIA money. Because he was antagonistic.

• 1:05:37Billy Corgan?

  Well, that's why I don't read the National Review.

• 1:05:39Speaker 04

  Right, right. Rothbard was right.

• 1:05:42Speaker 04

  But so in the early eighties, there's actually a funny backstory. So Copeland used to spy on the British agent Kim Philby, who's the basis for Harry Lime, Orson Welles, and the Third Man. British agent who defected to Russia. He was secretly a Russian agent. And he's Harry Lime in Orson Welles and the Third Man. So he would spy, the father of the police essentially, on Kim Philby in the 50s and 60s, when the members of the police were little boys. They remember meeting this future spy. What's funny and ties into the history of 80s rock, Kim Philby's good friend was Ronald Mallore, whose son, Joe Mallore, Joe Strummer.

• 1:06:25Speaker 04

  So you have the biggest group of the 80s, the police, whose father is instrumental in overthrowing countless governments. He's written a whole book about this from 89 called like, it's called The Player in the Game or something from 89. It is so pulped, it goes for like a grand on Amazon. There's no digital copies. It is a pulped book because he talks about his whole experience in the CIA. And Copeland, you know, junior, not the son. He once said, he goes, well, you know, the police were a psyop, the band. He said, he goes.

• 1:06:53Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I didn't hear. This is all news to me. So this is my reaction.

• 1:06:56Speaker 04

  Which made Sting upset. But he goes, yeah, the police were a psyop. He goes, you know, we wanted to see, you know, having that big of a band with 70,000 people. But his book from 89, he talks about overthrowing governments. He talks about the evolution of the CIA. But there is that funny connection where he would spy on Philby. And Philby had a timeshare house that Joe Strummer, as a boy, would come stay in with Philby as well. So you had the police, vaguely right-wing coded CIA. And then you had The Clash, famously left-wing coded. Both knowing Kim Philby, the basis for Harry Lime, the great noir spy. So that is a great rock and roll secret history.

• 1:07:35Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so stop one second. So.

• 1:07:40Billy Corgan?

  To me, as a rock person, okay, that's a lot to chew on.

• 1:07:43Speaker 04

  That's, yeah.

• 1:07:43Billy Corgan?

  Okay, but.

• 1:07:44Speaker 04

  We'll take a 10 minute break and you're like, okay.

• 1:07:46Billy Corgan?

  Okay, but take it one step further. Cause I think this is kind of what I'm after today.

• 1:07:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:07:53Billy Corgan?

  For those who get caught up in, is this true or is this not true? Let's just talk about it from a systemic point of view.

• 1:07:58Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:07:59Billy Corgan?

  Is your assertion there that there is governmental influence that maybe even the artists are not aware of?

• 1:08:05Speaker 04

  The artists are aware of it because Copeland III, the manager of the police, he said Donald Rumsfeld, who, also a Chicago guy, Donald Rumsfeld coincidentally dated my grandmother when they were teenagers in Chicago. So that's, that's how big the psyop goes apparently. But no, but.

• 1:08:20Billy Corgan?

  You know, somebody right now is typing, you're part of the psyop.

• 1:08:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, he's secretly Rumsfeld's grandson. Rumsfeld called the manager of the police around the mid 2000s. And he's like, how can we win the hearts of the Middle East through music? How can we use music to? So to your point, this stuff is really basic in terms of like, as you know, music is very powerful. Entertainment is insanely powerful. If the government was not trying to recruit people to influence it or to control it, or yet they would not be doing the job.

• 1:08:50Billy Corgan?

  Well, the way I, the way I've quantified it, if that's the right word, in my brain is,

• 1:08:56Billy Corgan?

  if you run everything, right? Culture in many ways is the thing that can be curated and controlled, but it has to have an organic.

• 1:09:07Speaker 04

  Kernel.

• 1:09:07Billy Corgan?

  Kernel. So for example, when I talked about rap supplanting rock at MTV circa 97, 98, there was an organic impetus there.

• 1:09:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:09:17Billy Corgan?

  The energy behind, you know, rap groups like the NWA was real.

• 1:09:22Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 1:09:22Billy Corgan?

  I mean, I was listening to them. It's not like, it's not like suddenly they dropped out from another planet.

• 1:09:27Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 1:09:27Billy Corgan?

  They represented something that was happening.

• 1:09:30Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:09:30Billy Corgan?

  Okay. So the point I'm after is,

• 1:09:35Billy Corgan?

  when you, when you see these shifts, these organic shifts, and they're based on sort of a kernel of energy, or let's call it a kernel of organic energy.

• 1:09:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:09:43Billy Corgan?

  I guess what I'm after is, is,

• 1:09:47Billy Corgan?

  undoubtedly, the police is one of the great bands, The Clash were one of the great bands.

• 1:09:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:09:51Billy Corgan?

  Is it? I'm trying to get, I'm trying to nail down, because obviously it's easier to just talk about like, these people are connected and then, and there's a sort of an insinuation there. And in your case, you're not insinuating. But my point is. How much of, how much of it do you think is actually people being pulled forward? Or they, or they, I mean, I don't feel like people are being walked into a room unless they're at the highest levels. That's a different conversation. But I'm just saying, it's, you know, Sting at 18, you know, did somebody say, yeah, we're going to use him? Or, and, and they become what Hillary Clinton called useful idiots? They become part of something that they're not aware of. But you case, in your case, you're saying they are aware of it.

• 1:10:30Speaker 04

  Well, I, I think in the case of like, let's say the Mick Jagger thing we're talking about earlier. You wanted him as a figurehead to have Mick Jagger.

• 1:10:36Billy Corgan?

  I'm talking about the specifics of, of, of this particular instance.

• 1:10:39Speaker 04

  Oh, of the police?

• 1:10:40Billy Corgan?

  Because you're talking about very specific associations, which I've never heard of before.

• 1:10:44Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:10:45Billy Corgan?

  And I take you at your word. Okay.

• 1:10:47Speaker 04

  I'll give you the ebook. I, I, I took pictures of each individual pages. I'm like, I'm never going to get this in their library alone again.

• 1:10:51Billy Corgan?

  Sure. So, but I'm saying, okay, so let's say, let's just play a game like, because I, I'm more interested in the system than I am in the actual actors.

• 1:10:58Speaker 04

  Tail, yeah.

• 1:10:59Billy Corgan?

  Because I think you need to go to the heart of the drive of the thing as opposed, because somebody's, if it is counter intel pro, or it is, it is government backed stuff.

• 1:11:08Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:11:09Billy Corgan?

  Well, there's always going to be a smoke haze in there somewhere.

• 1:11:11Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:11:12Billy Corgan?

  It's purposely a, a trail that's almost impossible to follow.

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:11:16Billy Corgan?

  So, okay, so let's play this game. So, is there an institutional aspect here where somewhere in 1982, somebody goes, right, the Clash represent this, the police represent that, we're going to get in behind and we're going to position them in this particular way? Because there are assertions that people have been pushed and propagated.

• 1:11:34Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:11:35Billy Corgan?

  I'm making the argument from the other side, which is from my position, I can see where people are kind of in a lane and they're pushed because they, because they're safe in that lane.

• 1:11:43Speaker 04

  Right. I, I think that in the case of the Clash and the police, the Clash thing is more coincidental. I don't think the Clash per se were pushed by any government, but I think with the police and especially with their father being like, oh yeah, they had government backing or whatever, which again Sting didn't like.

• 1:11:57Billy Corgan?

  But what, did Sting say something about, when you say didn't like it, what does that mean?

• 1:12:02Speaker 04

  It, it's in Copeland III's memoirs.

• 1:12:05Billy Corgan?

  Sure. But when you say didn't like it, what does that mean?

• 1:12:07Speaker 04

  He, he was like, I, I, I haven't read the memoirs yet, but I read the article summarizing the memoirs. And Sting in this case was like, I haven't read if he, if he negated it, rebuffed it or downplayed it. I don't know which of those, but I just know that like Sting was annoyed by that.

• 1:12:21Billy Corgan?

  Well, I would be too, if somebody said, well, you were, you know, you were a mildly talented person, we just chose you out of a lineup because you were useful to us in this particular way.

• 1:12:30Speaker 04

  We wanted you to run through those fields of gold in Sting's case. As part of the CIA.

• 1:12:36Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 1:12:36Speaker 04

  Fields of gold. Yeah, I mean, could the State Department have given them money or wanted them to push something? Again, you and I talked about this last time. Henry Pleasence, the music critic from the 50s, was a CIA agent. And the fact that he was a musician traveling the world was the perfect cover for that. Because, as you know, it's like, you're a musician, as we all know. If you're in Asia tomorrow, no one asks questions. Because it's like, well, you could always say, private show, getting paid a fortune for it. Done. No questions asked, because it's the nature of a big musician. So musicians are perfect for recruitment in that way. Because unlike actors, who it's like, you're not going to China to film a commercial.

• 1:13:13Billy Corgan?

  I remember the esoteric point that I was after, and I got lost in it. Okay.

• 1:13:17Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 1:13:18Billy Corgan?

  No, what I'm saying is, if you run everything, right? Let's say the government does run everything, but culture requires an organic impetus. So in that way, if you follow my math, if artists rise organically from the streets, using the term liberally, you know, in my case, a middle-class high school. If you rise up from somewhere and you make yourself known somehow, it seems to me that somewhere you end up on a list. And I don't mean it's a list of anything bad's going to happen to you. You just end up on a list of influence. Meaning, these people, and as I've said to friends in private, America is what, 320, 330 million people? No one's ever quite sure.

• 1:14:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:14:01Billy Corgan?

  Over 300 million people. Well, if you fall within the category of one of the 1,000 or 5,000 most influential people in the country, wouldn't somebody in those corridors or power be somewhat responsible to somebody to say, keep an eye on that?

• 1:14:17Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:14:17Billy Corgan?

  And let us know if we need to do anything.

• 1:14:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:14:21Billy Corgan?

  And you can see it in all manner of ways. It's not all nefarious. It could be suddenly somebody gets an ambassadorship, somebody's put on a USO tour, somebody... You know, there's ways to kind of pull people into systems. And the more that you're integrated into a system, the more likely you are to go along with the system. Because to buck the system means you're going to lose the privilege of the system or the access.

• 1:14:43Speaker 04

  Right. I agree with that completely. I think those things do exist and bureaucrats would love to sit there and compile those lists. That's actually a great job. I want you to figure out the 200 rock stars that we need to actually know about. And you're like a 25-year-old State Department employee. That's a fun job.

• 1:14:58Billy Corgan?

  Don't you think that's a reasonable thing to ponder?

• 1:15:01Speaker 04

  It would be insane for them not to do it. It would be, well, I should say, it would be incompetent and it would be foolish for them not to know who those people are. If you look at, I mean, look what happened with, in the last few years with celebrities, I'm not bringing this up.

• 1:15:16Billy Corgan?

  We gotta go viral here. Keep going.

• 1:15:17Speaker 04

  Okay, the Kanye West thing. So Kanye West has done innumerable harm the last few years, going full Nazi, in the last three or four years. And at the beginning of this, I talked about how similar this was to John Lennon, where John Lennon in 71 had his green card pulled and they were going to deport him because of his work with-

• 1:15:36Billy Corgan?

  There's even a documentary about it. I have not seen it, but it's, I think it's called-

• 1:15:40Speaker 04

  One-on-One or something like that?

• 1:15:41Billy Corgan?

  But the documentary is called John Lennon Versus the CIA, or John Lennon Versus US Government. There's a documentary about it.

• 1:15:47Speaker 04

  But John Lennon had his green card. They wanted to deport him because of his influence.

• 1:15:51Billy Corgan?

  Well, he was definitely hanging out with an interesting crowd.

• 1:15:53Speaker 04

  Oh, he was hanging out with the yippies and stuff, you know, Hoffman and Rubin and stuff. So when you have someone that's that famous, who is doing stuff that's considered subversive, again, regardless of what you think about either the politics on the left of Lennon, or on the right with Kanye West, it has a tremendous influence. And for Kanye in the last three or four years, who have been popularizing all kinds of anti-Jewish stuff, has had a tremendously negative effect, too. So by not, and I mean this in a positive way, to not be trying to like make sure rock stars are not going to go crazy and popularize like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is a pretty pro-social thing to check on in terms of like, hey, some handling-

• 1:16:34Billy Corgan?

  But let's take, let's take one step backwards.

• 1:16:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:38Billy Corgan?

  On Mr. West. Because, again, this is, this is my perspective in my vantage.

• 1:16:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'd love to hear this.

• 1:16:44Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so-

• 1:16:48Billy Corgan?

  This is probably half true, but why we were recording our album Melancholy Infinite Sadness just down the block, like literally a block away, Kanye was working at the Gap. That's my, that's my understanding of the, of the, of the, of the story.

• 1:17:03Speaker 04

  That's wow.

• 1:17:04Billy Corgan?

  And although I've never talked to him about it, I, I got the impression that some of the things that I was doing publicly in the nineties had some influence on his, let's call it strategic thinking at the onset of his career. By playing a contrarian, you kind of create this, this polemic that I talked about before. It's, it's, this is all just sort of to set up the story.

• 1:17:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:17:24Billy Corgan?

  But so us being Chicagoans and seeing his rise as a, as a star always had a particular interest to us because he's local and there's not a lot of people come up out of Chicago and have that level of influence or that level of fame. But at some point, it became obvious to me in particular that somebody flipped the switch on him and decided to push him.

• 1:17:45Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:17:46Billy Corgan?

  To, to the, to the, to the moon. And, and I would point to, because I have spoken about this publicly, because I'm not trying to wade into it all, but, but.

• 1:17:57Billy Corgan?

  Things that he did particularly that comes to mind was when he would jump on stage when people would be receiving an award, he would hijack.

• 1:18:03Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:18:05Billy Corgan?

  Anybody else in the music business, if they had done that, they would have been canceled.

• 1:18:09Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:18:10Billy Corgan?

  And I don't mean canceled socially canceled, I mean, they would have canceled them because it's just bad business.

• 1:18:14Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 1:18:14Billy Corgan?

  But for some reason, he was allowed to persist in this, in this, and, and you could argue was rewarded for it.

• 1:18:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:18:21Billy Corgan?

  I was once asked on Australian television, live morning, good morning, Australia, what I would do if he jumped up on stage when I was receiving an award, and I said, I'm from Chicago and all respect to a fellow Chicagoan, but I would have knocked him the out.

• 1:18:34Speaker 04

  And that would have gone viral. That would have been a big clip.

• 1:18:38Billy Corgan?

  It's out there if you want to watch it.

• 1:18:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's, that's, no, if he had actually done that.

• 1:18:42Billy Corgan?

  So what I'm saying is, and, and the reason I'm going on this whole thing, I'm trying to make it interesting.

• 1:18:46Speaker 04

  No, no, this is, this, trust me, this is very interesting.

• 1:18:48Billy Corgan?

  Okay. The reason I'm setting this all up is I saw someone who had real talent, but was pushed to the moon, to use the wrestling term.

• 1:18:56Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 1:18:56Billy Corgan?

  Pushed, in my estimation, in a way that felt like there was some other controlling aspect at work. And when people look the other way on what I saw as poor form behavior, where I know if I'd done it, I would have been thrown in the dustbin of history.

• 1:19:13Speaker 04

  Sure, sure.

• 1:19:14Billy Corgan?

  You don't have to be a mathematician to do that math. Okay, so I see the setup over here. So, yes, I agree with you about, let's call it, the fall in his poor public behavior since. But I'm just as fascinated with why he was put in that position in the first place. Because I can't think of anyone from that genre of music that has been pushed to that level.

• 1:19:40Speaker 04

  Well, and remember, when he-

• 1:19:41Billy Corgan?

  Can you?

• 1:19:43Speaker 04

  Not like, I mean, not like that. That was a very unique thing. And to your points, when he started to go off the deep end, remember he was doing screenshots of the text he was getting from Diddy? And Diddy was like, "Don't do this, don't do this." And Kanye was saying, "Don't kill me, Sean. Like, don't murder me." I'm like, I'm walking off the reservation here.

• 1:20:02Billy Corgan?

  So what are you after here? Because there's a lot to-

• 1:20:05Speaker 04

  Well, to go back to our earlier thing about like, why was Sean Combs allowed to operate this for so long? When apparently it was, if not an open secret, a lot of people knew about it. It's interesting that when Kanye West was having his meltdown, which included, of course, many horrific aspects, but was him essentially saying, "No handlers, I'm done." The person that was trying to rein him in was Sean Combs, the guy that he had, you know, very much ushered in his success. That he has a very close relationship with Sean Combs. You know, one critic-

• 1:20:33Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so, but is your argument, sorry. Go ahead and finish what you're saying.

• 1:20:35Speaker 04

  I'm just saying, his rise with Combs is very interesting, untangling the relationship there, untangling kind of the macro music industry.

• 1:20:42Billy Corgan?

  But I said the same thing about Puff Daddy. And I worked with Puff Daddy back in the day, so I was part of it all. But my point is-

• 1:20:51Billy Corgan?

  He was pushed to the moon too.

• 1:20:53Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:20:53Billy Corgan?

  In his generation.

• 1:20:54Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 1:20:55Billy Corgan?

  In that same era of the late 90s.

• 1:20:57Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:20:57Billy Corgan?

  Like, he went from, you know, basically an obscure music producer to running the world within five years.

• 1:21:06Speaker 04

  Right, yes.

• 1:21:06Billy Corgan?

  And, and for people who don't follow the math of what I'm after, Elvis didn't have running the world within five years. Madonna didn't have running the world in five years. Prince didn't. Michael Jackson didn't.

• 1:21:16Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:21:17Billy Corgan?

  So why did they pick that guy?

• 1:21:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:21:19Billy Corgan?

  To run the world?

• 1:21:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:21:21Billy Corgan?

  And, and when I say running the world, they were suddenly, he was suddenly running the world.

• 1:21:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:21:26Billy Corgan?

  He had power that was like way beyond the means of just a very successful music mogul.

• 1:21:31Speaker 04

  Apparently. I've seen, that documentary I have seen. Yeah, that, that's.

• 1:21:35Billy Corgan?

  I'm saying I witnessed it from, from the sideline of the whole thing. So I'm, what I'm after is, and I know people will personalize it, and they can if they want, but I'm saying is, I'm more pointing to the Wizard of Oz part of it all, which is, yes, you can talk about the personalities, but I'm watching the movement of energies.

• 1:21:52Speaker 04

  Why, right. Why was, why was he given the opportunity?

• 1:21:54Billy Corgan?

  Energies that seem to be cloistered and behind the scenes rally behind certain personalities and push them past what would seem to be even business savvy.

• 1:22:03Speaker 04

  Right. That's a great question. I, I don't, I think there is something to that. I think there are people who obviously push and elevate certain stars.

• 1:22:09Billy Corgan?

  Sure. So back to Mr. West. If he was put in this particular position of power.

• 1:22:15Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:22:15Billy Corgan?

  And certainly, I think, before his, his, uh, his public crashing out.

• 1:22:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:22:21Billy Corgan?

  You know, he was, his worth was estimated at somewhere between one and $2 billion.

• 1:22:25Speaker 04

  That's a pretty big crash out.

• 1:22:27Billy Corgan?

  Let's, let's just play the game from a slightly different angle, and it's in no way to encourage the, the behavior. Cause I, I too was offended by it, but is there any point to his crash out? Was, do you, do you, do you see anything in him raising his hand saying, I don't want to be part of this thing that I've been sort of wound into?

• 1:22:48Speaker 04

  When you're that big of a celebrity, you're your own industry. You're not just one lone artist. And so, his freak out, I think, obviously is part of some general, I'm, I'm, I'm unbuckling the seatbelt I want out of it, of the whole music industry complex.

• 1:23:00Billy Corgan?

  The logician, is that the word, logician?

• 1:23:02Speaker 04

  Well, if it is, it is now, brother.

• 1:23:05Speaker 04

  I know this word.

• 1:23:06Billy Corgan?

  The logical person in me says, you know, you can do it a little quietly, or you could just make an album about death like I did.

• 1:23:14Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 1:23:14Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 1:23:16Speaker 04

  There's a world where in 2022, you actually call him and you're like, brother, we're gonna make a double album together. And we're not gonna go crazy on Jewish people. We're just gonna make a double album.

• 1:23:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:25Speaker 04

  And that's, and that's a much better version of this.

• 1:23:27Billy Corgan?

  This doesn't go anywhere, but it is interesting to how these things work. There was a moment in time where, um, I don't know, I'd said something in an interview or something and, and he, he called me.

• 1:23:37Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 1:23:38Billy Corgan?

  Kanye.

• 1:23:38Speaker 04

  Really?

• 1:23:38Billy Corgan?

  Never talked to him, had never met him before, and still have never stood in his presence. And he called me and, and it was like one of those things like, okay, get on the phone. And it was almost like he was poking around if there's anything I wanted from him.

• 1:23:54Billy Corgan?

  And I, and I didn't want anything from him. So the conversation kind of went nowhere. It almost felt like a little bit like a kingmaker who calls out and says, you know, do I have something you need?

• 1:24:04Speaker 04

  That's very strange.

• 1:24:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:05Speaker 04

  What general era was it? Was it like five years ago? Or it's 20 years ago?

• 1:24:08Billy Corgan?

  This would have been seven or eight years ago.

• 1:24:11Speaker 04

  That's very strange.

• 1:24:12Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. And it was after my comment about saying I would knock him the out.

• 1:24:16Speaker 04

  That was soon after or much later?

• 1:24:18Billy Corgan?

  No, no, it was a few years after that.

• 1:24:20Speaker 04

  That's very strange. I mean, what's your take? When, when rock stars and pop stars have certain freakouts? I mean, we're talking about it. But it's like, on, do you always relate to them on some level in terms of like?

• 1:24:31Billy Corgan?

  Absolutely. Yeah. Um, again, it's hard because the way people's brains work in social media land these days. So again, no endorsement of the opinion or the behavior.

• 1:24:44Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:24:45Billy Corgan?

  But can I understand the freak out? Absolutely.

• 1:24:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:24:49Billy Corgan?

  Absolutely.

• 1:24:49Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:24:50Billy Corgan?

  Because, um, I think the hardest thing for me navigating the music business for over 30 years is understanding that you're in a rigged game. And a sane person, when they wake up and they realize they're in a rigged game goes, "I'm not gonna play the game anymore."

• 1:25:05Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:25:06Billy Corgan?

  The only problem is, it's the only game. Until the last 10 years.

• 1:25:11Speaker 04

  And tell me this, if you're talking, let's say you're talking with a pop star who's 22, 25, and they're doing alright, but you may see signs of a future former Disney Channel star crash out, or you just see some-

• 1:25:21Billy Corgan?

  There's one that comes to mind right now, that's super talented.

• 1:25:23Speaker 04

  No, what would you say to them if you're, if you have like a few minutes with them in terms of like, "Hey, you know, it may get, it's already crazy for you. In case it gets crazier, here's how you can kinda keep your head on straight." Here's what helped me.

• 1:25:35Billy Corgan?

  Uh, I would start by saying, "You're invariably gonna come up against some sort of wall that you cannot navigate with your charisma, your talent, or your, your alleged power."

• 1:25:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:25:49Billy Corgan?

  And you will start to realize that most of the people around you are, are, uh, they're transactional.

• 1:25:54Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:25:55Billy Corgan?

  And that's a haunting moment.

• 1:25:57Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:25:59Billy Corgan?

  I went through that and had nothing to lean on and went crazy. And in many ways, kinda committed career suicide. Which is not important for our conversation, but been there, done that. The only solution I found was God, and before somebody rolls their eyes. My argument would be, if you believe in God, or you believe in a higher, uh, let's call it thought, or, or organizing principle of life, you can put those two together. In my estimation, love and truth are the same thing. By leaning into, um, that part of my, uh, my understanding, my intuitive understanding,

• 1:26:43Billy Corgan?

  and my faith in the world and my faith in humanity, I actually found something that was antidote to the system that I'd been brought up in. And that was the only way I was able to navigate it and eventually wander back to a musical career that's been quite successful for the past 10 years or so. But that was very, very hard to do, because in, in essence, you have to deal with this-

• 1:27:07Billy Corgan?

  Bunch of dark stuff behind curtains and you never know. I call this the land of maybe.

• 1:27:13Speaker 04

  That would make a good fancy novel for kids.

• 1:27:14Billy Corgan?

  I've had a hundred, I've had a hundred meetings that all went well and no one ever told me no. It's the phone doesn't ring again.

• 1:27:21Speaker 04

  Right, right. Well, as you know.

• 1:27:22Billy Corgan?

  And, and when you, and when you start having something they want, which I have started again, then the phone starts ringing again.

• 1:27:29Speaker 04

  Right, because they don't want to have said no to you. They want to say, I never said no to you. Like, we're still good. Like.

• 1:27:33Billy Corgan?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:27:34Speaker 04

  I was just on vacation for four months.

• 1:27:36Billy Corgan?

  Or forty years. But, but I want to say one more thing because there are pop stars that I have a, I don't know them, but I have a personal affinity for because I, I see their talent. I see their charisma. I see how they have an incredible opportunity to, um, you know, uh, kind of throw up the Satan be gone part of the business.

• 1:27:57Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:27:59Billy Corgan?

  It's very difficult to do and I understand the temptations and I understand how they're probably surrounded by about four hundred yes people. Uh, and they often look like stylists for some reason. That's a joke. Um.

• 1:28:12Billy Corgan?

  It's so hard because I have had these conversations in private with many young artists and, and, and to explain to them. There's no way not to make a deal with the devil in the, in, in this biz, but you got to understand at what price. And if you can balance that, there is some way to, to kind of get through it. In my case, because I do get asked the question from twenty somethings, what would you do in this system? I say, I'm not really sure, other than to, uh, you have to build your own system. You have to build your own, um. You almost have to be your own record label. You have to be your own publicist. A lot of young artists figure out like the, the marketing part because they, they've learned and gained social media to their, to their, uh, to their benefit.

• 1:28:54Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:28:54Billy Corgan?

  But they don't understand how to sort of navigate the people who actually have the, their hands on, on the levers of power.

• 1:29:01Speaker 04

  That makes sense. Um.

• 1:29:03Billy Corgan?

  And.

• 1:29:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:04Billy Corgan?

  One more point.

• 1:29:07Billy Corgan?

  And I would argue it as a supposition for anybody that's this deep into the interview. Is it reasonable to think that people actually run a particular business? It could be superconductors, it could be the music business, that at some point along the way, they get calls or inferences from people above them in the power structure, not the power structure of that particular business, but the power structure of the world that say, we don't like that you're doing that, or we do like you're doing that, or we'd like more of that and a little less of that. Does that seem reasonable to people?

• 1:29:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:29:36Billy Corgan?

  I think most common sense people would say, yeah, I can see where that's possible. Does it mean they pick up the phone and say, we want you to get rid of pop star X, but we want you to push pop star Y?

• 1:29:44Speaker 04

  A red phone too, right.

• 1:29:46Billy Corgan?

  Not really sure about that part. It might be more of a title type of thing, like, this is coming, this is gone.

• 1:29:51Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 1:29:52Billy Corgan?

  Which is, which is something that I said I've witnessed and experienced personally.

• 1:29:57Billy Corgan?

  So it's hard for a young artist, particularly in their twenties, you know, young and full of ambition, and they actually do have something to contribute, to point to them and say, look, you need to look at the historical arc of this and understand where the political agendas are not going to help you, where the, your ability to generate money and resources and attention are not going to help you. You're going to have to rely on something far greater. And the only answer I have for that connects to what I would call the godhead, or, or let's call it the spiritual history of humanity, which is if you don't stand for truth, and you don't stand for love, if you don't stand for integrity, you will eventually pay. If you're paying with the devil, you'll figure that out when we leave this planet.

• 1:30:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:30:40Billy Corgan?

  But you will pay.

• 1:30:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:30:42Billy Corgan?

  There is no other way around it that I have seen personally.

• 1:30:45Speaker 04

  I think they find that helpful. That's, they could use that advice. I have a question I wanted to ask you, because I was reading about the David Bowie 76 Rolling Stone interview with Cameron Crowe.

• 1:30:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:57Speaker 04

  He's talking about, you know, it's just like Bowie was in his own weird kind of politics. And he was saying, you know, at concerts, he goes, you know, at their worst, a rock, a rock concert, like, I feel like I'm a fascist leader. He goes like, I have so much.

• 1:31:09Billy Corgan?

  Well, he had the haircut too going on there.

• 1:31:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, that was the whole Thin White Duke thing. But he's like, I have so much control. And, you know, you have, you have. Examples of concerts famously gone tragic, Altamad, the Travis Scott concert. And in hindsight, people always point to the vibe of the concerts or Mick Jagger having a, he had a Greek tattoo that said the end at Altamad's and Travis Scott had stuff, symbols up, that people read into after the fact. But people always say, yeah, the environment, the vibe at these shows was very bad. I wanted to ask you, as a performer, but also just as someone who's been at shows, ton of shows, what's the darkest environment you've ever been at a concert? Where you're like, boy, this is either, either where you're performing and you're like, this is kind of spooky, or something bad's gonna happen, or a show you've attended where you're like, is this gonna end with someone dying?

• 1:31:55Speaker 04

  This is like, the atmosphere here is-

• 1:31:57Billy Corgan?

  We have had people seriously injured at our shows and we, we actually had a horrible incident in Dublin Island where a young woman was killed in the mosh pit from, from just the violence of the, the mosh pit.

• 1:32:09Billy Corgan?

  So I have experienced that. But I would point to something slightly different.

• 1:32:18Billy Corgan?

  If you and I were just sitting around having a cup of Madame Zuzu's tea,

• 1:32:23Billy Corgan?

  I would say to you, invariably, if you deal in rock, you are dealing in shamanic energies.

• 1:32:28Speaker 04

  Sure. We talked about the Robert Fripp quote about that.

• 1:32:32Billy Corgan?

  Remind me, please.

• 1:32:33Speaker 04

  He, he had said something when he was with King Crimson, that the energy in a rock concert is such that if you direct it the right way, he believes you could make the world rotate backwards. He goes, the amount of energy of people not only hearing the music, but being put in a certain state because of the, sure, music plays and the emotions, yeah.

• 1:32:50Billy Corgan?

  Hence, whether young rock artists understand this intuitively or not, pop is after a different type of shamanism. Maybe we could pick that up in our third interview. But in our case, tribal drums, extremely loud guitars, slightly detuned at any given moment. So you're dealing with messing with brain hemispheres.

• 1:33:11Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:33:12Billy Corgan?

  And of course, we all know that the drums are probably the most primal way to get somebody to unleash their kind of inner, inner self with a capital S.

• 1:33:21Billy Corgan?

  So when you're standing in front of, uh, you know, I think the biggest concert ever played was 220,000 people.

• 1:33:28Billy Corgan?

  But commonly, you know, let's say it's 5,000, 20,000, somewhere in that range, and then bigger festivals, 60,000 or more. You're dealing with a lot of human energy flowing in one particular direction. And the, um, the, uh, the shamanic part of it, or the, uh, let's call it the zen warrior part of it is this. You've got all this energy and your, your, your capability, if you're skilled, is to create a loop.

• 1:33:57Billy Corgan?

  In essence, reflect energy back or feed into energy. So it creates an energy loop. And I will say there have been times in my life where the energy is so pitch intense that, um, it's almost hard to describe other than when I've had peak drug experiences. Something goes on in your brain and I assume something's going on in a lot of the audience's brain. I don't know if it's dopamine, but there's that concept. If you've ever done drugs, people say, you know, the brain can produce everything. Your brain is capable of producing LSD.

• 1:34:27Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 1:34:27Billy Corgan?

  DMT and all that stuff. So who knows what goes on there. But I have stood in those moments of what feels like utter chaos.

• 1:34:35Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:34:35Billy Corgan?

  It doesn't necessarily mean violence. It just means there's a chaotic element that is impossible to describe. And it is in those moments where the megalomaniac in yourself does ponder the idea. If you said, I think we should do X or Y. I'll tell you one quick funny story and it's, uh, it, it cost us dearly. We were playing a concert somewhere in the, in the, in the Midwest and we had, uh, checked out from the hotel, which was across the street. And, um, and I said during the concert, uh, hey, uh, there's a party after the concert in James's room. James from the band and, and because we had checked out of the hotel, I thought, okay, great. We're not there.

• 1:35:15Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:35:16Billy Corgan?

  Well, 3,000 kids showed up at the hotel. It was a locked floor, which I also considered when I was making my joke. And, um, people took the elevator to the sixth floor, went through the top of the elevator, broke into the closed seventh floor and destroyed the seventh floor.

• 1:35:30Speaker 04

  Oh my goodness.

• 1:35:32Billy Corgan?

  And I got a call the next day from the manager saying, did you tell everyone to go across the street for the party?

• 1:35:38Speaker 04

  You have to pay for that?

• 1:35:38Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:35:39Speaker 04

  Wow, so that's the Billy Corgan party planner.

• 1:35:44Speaker 04

  Was off to a very slow start.

• 1:35:46Billy Corgan?

  So it's a bit of a jokey thing, but again, I've seen the worst of it in people being seriously injured. I've seen incredible moments of sort of, wow, if you could harness this energy, not me, but if you could harness this energy, you know, there is that little bit of that, we could change the world.

• 1:36:03Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:36:04Billy Corgan?

  Consciousness rides in. But it is always subtextually based on the ability to uncork that energy. And artists that are effective at that know how to do that. Particularly if you play in a band that plays really loud.

• 1:36:20Speaker 04

  That makes sense. And you can see why, to go back to Abbie Hoffman, he thought he could get up and give an important speech at Woodstock.

• 1:36:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, good luck.

• 1:36:27Speaker 04

  And remember, Pete Townsend famously hit him with his guitar.

• 1:36:30Billy Corgan?

  As he should have.

• 1:36:30Speaker 04

  Right. So that was, that was, he was the original Kanye West, actually, Abbie Hoffman, getting up to take the mic. And he, Pete Townsend.

• 1:36:36Billy Corgan?

  Goes back to what I said about Kanye.

• 1:36:37Speaker 04

  He was you. He's like, no, you're getting hit with this guitar.

• 1:36:41Billy Corgan?

  There have been, there have been moments where the crowd is so out of control, not so much these days, but the crowd was so out of control that I had to stop the show and say, okay, nobody else can get on stage. This needs to kind of dial it down.

• 1:36:54Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 1:36:54Billy Corgan?

  And invariably, the crowd starts to revolt against the messenger. And, and every, in every single instance, I said the same thing, and it must have happened 40 times. I would stop, stop the concert and say, if one more person gets on stage, okay, I'm going to hit you with my guitar. And invariably, I would get flipped off and booed. And I'd say, okay, I'm 6'3", 220 pounds, try it.

• 1:37:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:37:18Billy Corgan?

  And not one person would get on stage. Now, think about, now just stop, pump the brakes on that. It's not even really meant to be a boast. We are four people in that instance, standing in front of 8,000 people.

• 1:37:32Billy Corgan?

  Okay, if those 8,000 people want to get on stage, no boast is gonna stop them. So what is it about the projection of the moment, or the sense of power, or even your own

• 1:37:43Speaker 04

  Sure, sure.

• 1:37:43Billy Corgan?

  Even your own delusion that convinces you that the four of you can stop the 8,000 of them?

• 1:37:51Speaker 04

  That sounds like a Mr. Beast YouTube show, where it's like four people with instruments versus 60,000 people in the crowd. That sounds like a YouTube contest show.

• 1:37:59Billy Corgan?

  Yes, so, so again, ultimately, everything we're talking about is similarly rooted. It's the dynamics of power.

• 1:38:07Speaker 04

  And spirituality, too, of whatever's running through you at that time.

• 1:38:10Billy Corgan?

  Sure. And where are you sourcing from?

• 1:38:12Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:38:13Billy Corgan?

  If you're sourcing from a shamanic place, but it's integrally rooted in the godhead, you're probably gonna be okay. If you're going the other way, and you really want that chaos, and you want that chaos to feed something in you, you're asking for it.

• 1:38:28Speaker 04

  Well, really quick, you're getting into something there with the drums. There's a book from the 50s by William Sargent. It's considered like the best book, what it's worth, on brainwashing. It was written, co-written with Robert Graves, the poet. But he uses that woman Maya Derin that we talked about. Who went to Haiti to study voodoo possession. And, but there's a whole chapter, and apparently was very influential on L. Ron Hubbard, on drums. And the whole book was influential on Hubbard, not the drums. This whole thing on the nature of drums, and the nature of brainwaves, and the way drums are the easiest way to agitate people.

• 1:39:05Billy Corgan?

  You've taken a full circle. Aleister Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard.

• 1:39:09Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:39:10Billy Corgan?

  Well, yeah. See, just leave it there.

• 1:39:15Billy Corgan?

  Is there any truth, here's the last question, is there any truth to the idea that they had a bet?

• 1:39:19Speaker 04

  That who, L. Ron Hubbard and?

• 1:39:20Billy Corgan?

  And Aleister Crowley had a bet.

• 1:39:22Speaker 04

  I've never heard that. What's the nature of the bet?

• 1:39:24Billy Corgan?

  That they both said that we're each gonna start a religion, and let's see who wins.

• 1:39:28Speaker 04

  Well, I'll tell you who said that he told that to L. Ron Hubbard, and this would be the third episode, because it'd jump into another sphere of entertainment. Del Close, the shaman from Chicago.

• 1:39:40Speaker 04

  Who was SNL's comedy teacher, who knew Charles Manson and L. Ron Hubbard. Del Close, who, again, has taught everyone from Bill Murray to Tina Fey to Stephen Colbert, comedy. And he was a Wiccan priest.

• 1:39:52Billy Corgan?

  You're talking about Del Close, the guy who was the ran Second City?

• 1:39:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, he was the improv teacher. But he said, he said he was the one that told L. Ron Hubbard the real money isn't starting a religion. So that can be our third conversation, the occult side of comedy.

• 1:40:08Billy Corgan?

  Let's see if we survive this conversation. All right, Conrad, thanks again.