Vernon Reid | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Billy Corgan sits down with guitar icon Vernon Reid — founder of Living Colour and the Grammy-winning force behind miles of electric innovation — for a high-voltage conversation about rewriting the rules of rock. Vernon traces his path from discovering Coltrane to NYC’s avant-garde scene, as well as the precient rise of the Black Rock Coalition. He opens up about the lightning-strike creation of “Cult of Personality,” the surreal shockwaves of their SNL performance, and the pressures that come with success — from label politics to the creative toll on the band. They dive into AI’s existential threat to art, and how the “holy ghost” of a live show can turn a stage into a spiritual event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Too soon for Black Friday at Lowe's? Not when the deals are this good. Get your choice of a DeWalt 20 volt max reciprocating saw or circular saw for just $99. Plus, MyLowe's Rewards members get free same day delivery. Black Friday deals are on now at Lowe's. In store and online. Valid through 11/4. $25 minimum and loyalty membership required. Order eligible items by 2 p.m. Subject to weight and size restrictions and availability. Terms at Lowe's.com/shippingterms.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  From the moment I stumbled on the lift and I yelled at was, yo, man, put a beat to this. So you have a brief window, bro. You have a brief window when your compatriot's willing to listen. You have a brief window to shit. And while they're willing to listen, make hay. Make hay while you may, right?

• 0:53Billy Corgan?

  I remember thinking two things like, wow, this is really good. You guys sounded great. And then I was like, why is he wearing like a yellow Cory?

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Oh, Cory.

• 1:02Billy Corgan?

  Why is he wearing like the yellow banana?

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Oh, you mean the body glove?

• 1:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  The body glove thing that was, you know? It was his thing, bro. It's his thing.

• 1:13Billy Corgan?

  What has riding your horse for 50 years taught you?

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Wow, get off. Ha!

• 1:23Billy Corgan?

  Vernon Reid, thank you for being on my show. I'm so pleased to see you today.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Thank you, Billy Corgan, for having me. It's fantastic.

• 1:32Billy Corgan?

  I want to start with Ronald Shannon Jackson.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:36Billy Corgan?

  A name I did not know until I started doing my research.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, Ronald Shannon Jackson was the beginning of my professional career. It's one of these really counterintuitive stories, you know? I was in, I was on the R and B track. I was working, it was in a band called Stepping Stone with songwriter, keyboard player, singer named Kashif. He had written some hits for Evelyn Champagne King. We used to bump heads all the time. And because I was into rock music and we had, we had back and forth about.

• 2:12Billy Corgan?

  And you're how old at this point?

• 2:13Speaker 01

  I'm got him.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Nineteen?

• 2:16Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm bumping heads with him and I was, I moved away from my parents. I was living in Park Slope with the drummer of the band and we both got fired over an answering machine and um, and I got a phone call from a bass player, the dear friend of my Melvin Gibbs and he, oh yeah, right. I got a phone call and he says, you gotta hear this drummer I'm playing with. So I go to this kind of loft jazz thing and there's this large ensemble of musicians and there's this drummer who's incredibly energetic and the music was very avant garde, but very captivating because he had this blues thing that he, he threw in like these kind of shuffles and things.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  It was very captivating and I was like, man. So I then, after seeing him, I'm intrigued. And then I go to the Public Theater. They used to have a thing, Joe Pap Jazz at the Public.

• 3:11Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  And he was playing with James Blood Omer.

• 3:14Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I know that.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Amin Ali and David Murray. It was, it was uh, James Blood Omer's band. And he was on fire. He was like completely, was you know, incredibly aggressive. And I spoke to him. I said, and I was, I was like a fawning kid, you know, it's like, Mr. Jackson was correct. I said, he looked at me, so who are you? He said, oh, I'm Melvin's friend, you know. Then Melvin calls me and he says, he wants to hear you play guitar. And I kind of showed up, trying to play my, my busted, you know, my busted up Al D Mola, Lix or whatever. My Bill Connors, you know, whatever. Like, and uh.

• 3:50Billy Corgan?

  We talked, what's the, what's the famous Al D Mola thing of?

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Oh my, the famous.

• 3:54Billy Corgan?

  Race with the devil or?

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Is that him? Yeah, he was, yeah, he was like the second guitarist we returned to forever. The first one, Bill Connors, was like my absolute hero.

• 4:04Billy Corgan?

  But Al was a total shrek. He still is. I saw some clip of him recently.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, his whole thing was muting. He would, he had this whole thing about muting. And he would play really fast, but with the strings muted.

• 4:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  That was his thing, you know, like all the guitar players that had to have like one thing that they did that that made them stand out, you know? Anyway, he said, be here next Tuesday. And and from there, then I started playing with him.

• 4:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  And it's first time I flew on an airplane and all that kind of.

• 4:36Billy Corgan?

  How how steeped in jazz or jazz history were you at that point?

• 4:41Speaker 01

  I've been exposed, but I was mainly into funk, R and B. I mean, the one thing that was great about my parents is that they didn't care about what music I was listening to.

• 4:53Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  They only cared about whether it was loud or not. So it could be Mahavishnu, it could it could be the band, the Gypsies. It could be Cool in the Gang. He said, Vernon, turn it down. That was it. They had made no other judgment. They, you know, they never they never turned that noise. They said, they just said, turn it on.

• 5:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  So that was the thing. And I was a sponge for all. I loved music, all Motown, rock and roll, everything that I just heard, you know?

• 5:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  So.

• 5:20Billy Corgan?

  So his his group was Decoding Society.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  The Decoding Society.

• 5:23Billy Corgan?

  You made some records with him.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Yep, I made this record Eye on You, and then we made Man Dance, and we made Barbecue Dog. You know, and we made Nasty, we made these, Decode Yourself.

• 5:35Billy Corgan?

  Because the the guys and girls, but at least the guys that I know that in in that free jazz tradition, and he was connected, you know, Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Albert Eiler.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:50Billy Corgan?

  Like, I listen to all those people, so I like that stuff.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:53Billy Corgan?

  But, you know, the hit or miss ratio in free jazz is kind of interesting.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 5:59Billy Corgan?

  Because it's so free that when it works, it's amazing. And when it doesn't, it's like, what am I listening to?

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Like it's like anything, when it works, it does.

• 6:06Billy Corgan?

  Yes, but I mean, I guess what I'm after is you're a talented young musician, you know? Most talented young musicians are not stumbling into free jazz territory.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Right. You know what it was? I'll tell you what, I went to Brooklyn Technical High School. It's not a music school at all. It's a technical high school, but it had after school programs. And there was a jazz workshop and there was a Dr. Gene Geis, saxophonist. And he used to do this thing where he would play records, right? So he uh, he put on the original James Brown version of Cold Sweat. Then he would put on the Mongo Santa Maria version.

• 6:42Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Of Cold Sweat. And he put on, he put on the Julie Andrews version of My Favorite Things. Now, I remember My Favorite Things because I was, I went on a Catholic school trip to Radio City to see The Sound of Music.

• 6:56Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  So I was very familiar with the tune.

• 6:58Billy Corgan?

  She knew the melody and that.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  And then he put on the John Coltrane version of My Favorite Things. It's the first time, the first time I ever heard John Coltrane and it was like a bolt from the blue.

• 7:09Billy Corgan?

  I had the same experience with Coltrane. It's funny, we connected for the Coltrane in the exact same way. Cause I was like, I know this melody. And then he took me on this.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  And you, and the thing is, and you knew that he was, you knew that he loved the tune. You knew that he was playing.

• 7:28Billy Corgan?

  It wasn't ironic.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Right. He wasn't, it wasn't a vehicle to blow over. Like you could hear when the dog barks, when the bee stings, when I'm feeling sad. I simply remember My Favorite Things and then I don't feel so bad. He put all of that.

• 7:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  In the horn. And I felt that.

• 7:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  And you probably felt that at the same time.

• 7:51Billy Corgan?

  What a, sorry, just, what a beautiful musician.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:54Billy Corgan?

  What a beautiful, I mean, wow.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:57Billy Corgan?

  Still, I'm still kind of in awe of him.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Well, he kind of gave his life for us. I mean, on a level. He was one of these people that, that just really was very, it was not about his ego. He was, he threw himself.

• 8:10Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, there's that, there's that documentary where when he really turns to more avant garde jazz and the audience completely abandons him.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. All right, but he had to go because he's a nerd. You ever hear, you ever hear, you ever hear any interviews?

• 8:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  With John Coltrane? It's amazing. There's a BBC interview with, with John Coltrane.

• 8:30Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I'm gonna look this up.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  That's amazing. It's audio, right? So when you see pictures of John Coltrane, he seems very serious. You know, and, you know, and, and you project the whole thing about. And he was talking to this BBC reporter about reads. We're just talking about, you know, and he was just going, well, you know, I had this one read and I was kind of, his voice was kind of like, I had this one read and I don't know, I didn't like it. So I tried this other read and, and the reporter's like, yes, Mr. Coltrane, I'm sure that your reads are fascinating. He was completely frustrated, but he was like, yeah, focused. So he was, it was a whole, his, you know, there's a picture of John Coltrane when he was in the Navy.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  When he's like maybe 18 years old and it's incredible. All this humanity is there and you could tell he's a scared kid. And, and when you see the picture, you're gonna go, you don't know. But you are gonna turn the world of music upside down.

• 9:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, what a.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 9:35Billy Corgan?

  Beautiful cat, man. Wow. So, uh, I remember this period of music. If you let me set this up, it won't make any sense what I'm saying until I get to the end. But I remember this period of music, uh, because I was interested in guitar and I was interested in music. And, and, you know, because New York is always a, a media epicenter. What goes on in New York tends to get preference for what goes on in Chicago, which is where I'm from. So I kept hearing about the New York art scene and, you know, uh, Zorn and, uh, and, uh, what's his name? Blaswell.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:13Billy Corgan?

  You know, and I'd even occasionally get those records. And I, I didn't really know what the I was hearing. It's not that it was bad. I just didn't understand it.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:23Billy Corgan?

  Um, but you were actually in that world at that time. So can you kind of show, tell me at least what it felt like to you as a musician being in it?

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Well, it was very. It was very confrontational in the sense of, I mean, I came up loving pop music. I love popular music forms.

• 10:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  And funk, R and B, rock and roll.

• 10:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  That is never.

• 10:48Billy Corgan?

  What's not to like?

• 10:49Speaker 01

  That's never.

• 10:50Billy Corgan?

  Right?

• 10:50Speaker 01

  That's never, but this other thing, these other modalities came in. And for some, maybe the gateway was my favorite things and I could see how they related. And then I slowly was introduced to Miles Davis and all of that. And then Hendrix, what Hendrix did would feed back, what he, the way he was able to negotiate noise and melody and kind of move seamlessly. So there's a, so hearing Coltrane scream and hearing Hendrix's guitar scream, there was something that was relatable, even though they weren't the same things. And then hearing Eric Dolphy was completely blew my mind.

• 11:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  So there was a place where it all worked. And then, you know, talking about Chicago, I mean, thinking about P. Cozy, who played with Miles, you know, when Miles was in the super psychedelic period, or when he did electric, he's a guitarist on Electric Mud.

• 11:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 11:50Billy Corgan?

  When Miles was playing to the Y.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then, you know, and thinking of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, which is the most, one of the most important.

• 11:58Billy Corgan?

  But I'm just saying as a kid, as a, I'm not trying to interrupt you, but I'm saying as a kid. Chicago was, it was, was about the blues, which at that point in the eighties was very tourist blues. Some of those guys were still around, but it was the tourist blues.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:12Billy Corgan?

  We had the Blues Festival, but it was the tourist Blues Festival.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:15Billy Corgan?

  You know? So even my exposure to blues was kind of funky.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:20Billy Corgan?

  And then where I was growing up, I didn't have any exposure to any, whatever avant garde was going on in Chicago, I wasn't hearing about, but I kept hearing about New York because New York's always New York. It's always New York first and everybody else second, second city, right? So I'm just saying. But when you said it was confrontationally.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, confront, well, I mean confront confrontational in the terms, in the sense of aesthetics. We're confronting one of the commercial.

• 12:44Billy Corgan?

  The fact that you love that stuff was.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like, I love, you know, I, my process was additive, not subtractive. I didn't suddenly didn't dig James Brown.

• 12:55Billy Corgan?

  So when you met one of these guys who was like, it's gotta be like this.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  No, well, you know, actually, interestingly enough, you know, I met John Zorn used to was a, was a record clerk at the Soho Music Gallery, you know, and he got all the imports of all these different things. I mean, when I met him, I didn't even know he played saxophone and later on I got to know that he was a great saxophonist. But you know, there was a thing about who, you know, like what was hip, what was not hip. I mean, and, and, and really there was some very interesting collisions at that, at that time, like the, we're talking about early eighties, late seventies, you know, when hip hop was coming in.

• 13:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  You know, a lot of the people who I thought of who are in the so free jazz. Well, they were, there were moments where they were shockingly narrow about hip hop. People were.

• 13:47Billy Corgan?

  Oh, that's funny.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Hip hop.

• 13:48Billy Corgan?

  You would have thought they would embrace that, yeah.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Well, the R and B people didn't dig it. The funk people didn't dig it and a lot of the jazz, because it was like, it was these hood kids. It was not, it was considered novelty music.

• 14:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Right. And the idea of the turntable and appliance becoming an instrument.

• 14:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Was completely like, for a lot of people was hairball, right? They couldn't, they couldn't get around it. But from the first time I heard scratching, I was related it to the noise coming out of guitars, coming out of saxophone. This disruptive.

• 14:25Billy Corgan?

  The scronk.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  The scronk, this disruptive interruption in the flow of the everyday. And there's something about that sudden disruption, like thunder, right? That appealed to me. There was something about it. I can't explain it.

• 14:41Billy Corgan?

  I, I get it. I get.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? It's kind of like, I always say, I, I related to my, my experience with food. Like first time I had a falafel, it was a Marmots, right? Very famous falafel joint. They start in Connecticut, they have what they have on McDougal Street, right? The first time I had a falafel, like I almost spat it out.

• 15:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  I was like, this is the worst. This is the most appalling, I mean, what is, I mean, horrend, I mean, absolutely no, right? And then I found myself on McDougal Street.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  And I went to my mom's and I ordered a falafel.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  And I took my second falafel and I loved it. And this is one of the great mysteries to me. I had a horrible, my first bite of falafel, absolutely not.

• 15:35Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  So what was it?

• 15:37Billy Corgan?

  Between.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Between in the interim.

• 15:39Billy Corgan?

  Falafel one and two.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Between falafel one and two, and then it became.

• 15:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  One of my favorite food items ever.

• 15:46Billy Corgan?

  I had the same experience with the band, uh, uh,

• 15:50Billy Corgan?

  Bauhaus, you know Bauhaus?

• 15:54Billy Corgan?

  I was dating this girl and she put on Bauhaus. And the first time I heard it, I thought, it's all out of tune.

• 16:04Billy Corgan?

  What am I listening to? And I remember saying, how can you listen to this? And then three days later, I was like, I wanted to hear it again.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 16:13Billy Corgan?

  Like, what is that, right?

• 16:14Speaker 01

  What is, what is?

• 16:15Billy Corgan?

  Something shifts, yeah.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  That shift, and that's the, when people.

• 16:18Billy Corgan?

  See, Bad Brains did that to me, too. I saw Bad Brains live, eighty six Ebor City. And HR was going crazy.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:26Billy Corgan?

  And I, you know, your first reaction is, what, what is this?

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:31Billy Corgan?

  And then by the end of the concert, I said, that's the greatest band I've ever seen in my life.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  It's like Joseph Spence, first time I heard Joseph Spence, out on the rolling sea, right?

• 16:38Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  The Bahamian, Bahamian kind of gospel folk.

• 16:43Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Guitarist. So the first time I heard Joseph Spence, I was like, this dude is bugging. He's simply, he's simply bugging. And then, and then I go, this is the greatest guitarist I've ever heard in my life. I went from this cat and I went way to this cat. I just went completely to polar thing. And that's the beautiful, that's the beauty of art and music, the beauty of it is that it can assault you. The first time I saw Jackson Pollock, I saw Jackson Pollock, one of his black and white drip paintings at the Pomp and Doo in Paris.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  I was traveling with, with the decoding society had a day off and I decided to go to the pump them, the, the modern art museum. And they had a, they had a Nam June Pa exhibit and the entire floor, it was nothing but TV sets. And they were playing in patterns and it was fascinating. And I was walking up the stairs and I walked into a gallery and there was this black and white painting. And it sucked the air out of my lungs. I was literally was, was breathless. Maybe it was me climbing the stairs. I don't know. But it just, it struck me.

• 17:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  I, his rage.

• 18:01Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Was still in the canvas and it got me. And, and, and in that instant, all the criticisms of abstract expressionism, my, my kid could do it. Anybody could, you know? All of that, I heard that, right? Those criticisms of modern art, but my direct experience of this one painting completely changed.

• 18:23Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  It changed.

• 18:25Billy Corgan?

  Okay. So set that aside because that's one tangent, but I also want to talk about the Black Rock Coalition.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 18:32Billy Corgan?

  Cause this is eighty four, eighty five.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Eighty five. Yeah, we saw it. Yeah.

• 18:35Billy Corgan?

  So.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Well, I mean.

• 18:37Billy Corgan?

  Cause I'd never heard of this before, but so.

• 18:40Billy Corgan?

  Walker, great viewers here. Like, give me the context of why.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Well, okay. So the context is kind of like, New York in the early eighties was an amazing place. There was a huge number of clubs around, places to play. Part of this was because of the financial crash in the seventies.

• 19:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Suddenly the real estate market kind of crashed, the commercial real estate market crashed.

• 19:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  And people, entrepreneurs could do things that they couldn't do before. So people were putting up restaurants, clothing stores and clubs, right? And there were all of these clubs and, and that's the, the milieu against which, you know, decoding society, defunct.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Jump up a bunch of these different bands that were combining punk and jazz and what have you, you know, as was Curlew and Material and all of that was kind of happening in this time period. And, you know, it was a very, um, the nightlife thing, this was the time of the velvet rope, right? So one day, one day you're going into the club, like Dance Etiri, you know, Dance Etiri was like.

• 19:50Billy Corgan?

  We actually played Dance Etiri.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Dance Etiri is phenomenal club. It was like, it's like a.

• 19:54Billy Corgan?

  It was a little weird to play as a gig, though.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I can imagine. But it was, it was, um, great. And then one day you're in the club and it's great. And the next day you can't get into the club because the doorman is like, no. And then so this stuff like that was starting to happen. And then I was seeing stuff with, with, um, it was hard for my friends to get gigs and, and I was really this one particular gig, um, I was, again, Melvin Gibbs shows up, he had a band called I and I, and he had a DJ, DJ Logic, because the first band, the first rock band that I know of that had a DJ as a regular member of the band.

• 20:31Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  I saw this gig, it was incredible. And they were like two people in the audience, you know, with me and another dude, right? And I was, I said, what the hell? And I, and I just started one day, it was a Friday, I just started calling friends of mine. I started calling people. And I was like, yo, man, I, you know what, I want to, what are you doing on Friday? Could we, could we get together? And we got together at the just above mid, midtown, it was art gallery, just above midtown gallery. It was African American female, Linda Goodbryant is the, you know, was the curator, owner of it. And we met and we just like, um, and it was myself and Greg Tate and the writer Greg Tate. He figures big in all of this because he was the first journalist to write about myself and another

• 21:17Speaker 01

  guitarist named Ronnie Drayton. We were on the cover of Musician Magazine, the best guitar she never heard of, blah, blah, blah. And, and I always say, man, is what's going on? You know, I started saying, what, do you see weird, what's, is it me? And the people I was talking to, nah, man, this, this is weird. You know, there was a woman in condemnation was the manager of all female rock bands. And nah, it's weird, you know? So that's kind of where it started.

• 21:45Billy Corgan?

  But philosophically.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Philosophically was, it was about the.

• 21:47Billy Corgan?

  Cause I read this whole kind of long manifesto.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was Greg's, that was Greg's writing.

• 21:51Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:52Billy Corgan?

  But I want to know your.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, my perspective was like, it had a combination to do with what was happening in the clubs. But it was also what's happening in radio and what have you. Like, it used to be that the different, you know, we had like, um, say W N E W was the rock station.

• 22:12Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  And we had W B L S, which is the R and B station. Well, you could listen to W B L S and then hear The Rolling Stones miss you, right?

• 22:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Or you could hear, I mean, the first time I heard Tommy Bolin was on W B L S on a Saturday. They played like, you know, like really, and then you could hear Papa Don't Take No Mess on W N E W. Right? You could hear, there was, I mean, they were, the stations were doing, the rock station was doing this thing. But they had, they played plenty of music that crossed those boundaries because the DJs were like auteurs. They weren't, they played what they liked.

• 22:46Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Right? Like, that's, that's the way it was. That's how rappers delight. That's how Prince, I mean, I want to be your lover. Frankie Crocker, Frankie Crocker literally broke Prince in the New York market.

• 22:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Right? So there was a freedom. And then all of a sudden, it shifted like radically. Suddenly you weren't hearing James Brown on the rock station.

• 23:08Billy Corgan?

  Well, why do you, you attribute it, you attribute that to anything?

• 23:12Speaker 01

  I attribute that to, um, radio consultancy, you know?

• 23:16Billy Corgan?

  Ah, the corporate class kicking in.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  The corporate, yeah. And the, the idea of, um, narrow casting, the markets, narrow casting, like focusing.

• 23:26Billy Corgan?

  Okay, now this makes sense.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:28Billy Corgan?

  Because, because when I read his long manifesto, I was thinking, well, there's truth in here, but it's not holistic in the sense that I understand it because that wasn't my experience, right?

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:40Billy Corgan?

  So I was trying to understand why there was a need to sort of create at least a kind of a, a vision.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's kind of like the idea that, you know, that rock music is now white music. Black people don't play it.

• 23:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  And I never accepted the premise.

• 23:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  That the premise. For myself, I mean, it's also about what was, what was, what was considered to be rock and roll music, what was not. Like my first concert I ever went to, my first record I ever bought with my own money was Funkadelic Cosmic Slop. And that was the first concert I ever went to was

• 24:13Speaker 01

  War, Rare Earth, uh, and Funkadelic at the Garden.

• 24:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  And that's my, you know, my way of thinking of about rock and roll music is it includes the Isley Brothers.

• 24:27Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  It's the Isley Brothers.

• 24:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, Ernie's playing.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Ernie and Ernie, yeah, and Ernie was completely shut out in the seventies. That, I mean, and he, he kept the Hendrix voice alive on hit records, not, not, not rock critic records.

• 24:46Billy Corgan?

  Sure, yeah.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  But commercial hit records.

• 24:48Billy Corgan?

  That's true.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  And he was completely shut out. He was completely ignored by the guitar press of that time period. And, and was

• 25:00Billy Corgan?

  That's really true that you say that. I never looked at it that way, but it's true. He doesn't really get his due.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Doesn't, he never went, especially in his prime, when he was young and on fire.

• 25:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  He was summarily ignored. And, um, and I remember that pissed me off.

• 25:18Billy Corgan?

  So there, was there a sense of like, I'm trying to find the right way to put it. Was there a sense, not of injustice, but like

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Injustice would work.

• 25:27Billy Corgan?

  Okay, okay. I don't want to put words in your mouth. Yeah.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, because, because the thing about it is, it's not that, um, I didn't love Rory Gallagher. I love him. He's incredible. It's not, it's not that I didn't appreciate, uh, Jan Akerman. Jan Akerman is an influence on me. But

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Ernie Isley deserved to be, to be featured on it, to have his own cover and his own story about how he, he literally saved the Isley brothers. He actually dragged them from the 50s and 60s into their later career because

• 26:04Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I like that period of their music too. It's some really cool stuff.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Well, that lady is a re-record because they, that was originally a song of theirs that was part of the bossa nova craze in the 60s. And it was Ernie Isley that insisted that they re-record it as the funk rock masterpiece that it became.

• 26:26Billy Corgan?

  I love their version of Summer Breeze.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Oh, incredible.

• 26:29Billy Corgan?

  His

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, and it's incredible. And it's very, not say, it feels organic. It's like an organic, the cover feels

• 26:36Billy Corgan?

  It made me love the Isleys even more.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Extraordinary, you know, and they

• 26:39Billy Corgan?

  Because I thought, okay, their embrace of this greater musical language, it was like, wow, this is so cool, you know?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 26:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Their version of Ohio, you know, is, I mean,

• 26:51Billy Corgan?

  I don't know that. I have to look that up. Yeah.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:53Billy Corgan?

  So, uh, the reason I ask that is because, you know, uh,

• 26:59Billy Corgan?

  I mean, it jumps ahead in the story and I, I'm not quite ready to do, but, but overall, in the overall picture, you know, your emergence into the world of guitar thing was at times treated like a curiosity and invariably is tied to your skin color, you know? Guitar players, I think, don't think of you like that. You know what I mean? You know how guitar players think? Can he play?

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:26Billy Corgan?

  And so anybody I was ever around was like, oh, Vernon can play. Or have you seen Vernon live? It was always about your chops and your accomplishment as a musician. But, you know, the mainstream American media has a way of saying, you're in this box, you're in this box, you're in this. So I was curious about the, the Black Rock Coalition, you know what I mean? Because it sort of sets up in a weird kind of way, it sets up the, not the fight, but the thing that's coming down the road for you as a musician.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 27:55Billy Corgan?

  Did you, because you're sort of floating in this, you know, you haven't made the turn into a commercial artist yet, you know what I mean, where you have all those pressures.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:05Billy Corgan?

  Did you have a musical vision for your life, or were you just like, I'm chasing whatever I'm interested in here?

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Well, I was, I was very dedicated to Shannon, to Shannon's vision and his music. And, um, if, and, uh, you know, I, I loved it. And, uh, but at a certain point, you know, when you're part of a band and then there's a,

• 28:34Speaker 01

  there's a time when you gotta go. You know, but you're in it.

• 28:39Billy Corgan?

  You mean like every day?

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's a time where you gotta go. Well, we had a, we had a, we were, um, we were in, in, um, oh my gosh, we were in Indonesia. We were, we were traveling, you know, because they used to have these United States, you know, USIS, US Information Service, which is probably a branch of the CIA or whatever, but they had these artistic exchanges.

• 29:04Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  So that's why you get like, you know, musicians would come, the gamelan musicians would come over and they, there was a whole.

• 29:11Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know you were in that whole world, yeah.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's a very specific, it's kind of like, you gotta know somebody that knows somebody that knows somebody.

• 29:20Billy Corgan?

  But still, it's a gig.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  But it's a gig, right? And, and, and that's how I got to, I went to Morocco. I, I did two USIS tours, and one with Ronald Shannon Jackson. And I did another one with the vibraphones, Jay Hogard.

• 29:36Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  And, and that's how I, I went to Morocco, that's how I went to Egypt, that's how I went to Malaysia. That's how I experienced a lot.

• 29:44Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know any of that.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  It was an incredible thing, but we, we had a knock, we had a, we had a thriller. We had one of those, you know, and we were screaming at each other and it was about a lobby call. It was about a lobby call that I was on time for. And, and the, and the fact that I was on time for the lobby call and he's yelling at me and I'm like, lobby call's at 10 o'clock, I mean, it's 10 o'clock, I'm here.

• 30:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  He said, where the hell, you know, and, and later I realized, I like went to McDonald's or something and, uh,

• 30:20Speaker 01

  And I timed it so that I would get, you know, I got back exactly at ten, but you know, the other guys have been, were just sitting around and I was, where is he?

• 30:29Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I see.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  But I literally walked in at ten on the dot. But I think he was, I, I think because we were in, we were out in a,

• 30:40Speaker 01

  I think he was more concerned about, well, what if anything happened? How am I going to tell your moms that you're like?

• 30:45Billy Corgan?

  Oh, okay.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  I think that was behind it, but I didn't think of that at the time. We just literally screamed at each other. And the words were exchanged and those kind of words that you can't take back. And then I, then I realized, okay, I said, um, yeah, and that was the beginning, and that was the beginning of what eventually became Living Color.

• 31:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that's, that was literally the next thing on my thing. It was, it was, you know, because the early version of Living Color was sort of like, you're really your life's work, which was this greater form of integration of, of musical styles.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. It started out, it started out as a, as just a trio. I was the vocalist and I was, and I was, I can, I consider myself an, an early pioneer of shoe gazing because I was so nervous.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  You know, I, yeah, I was, you know, so, and at a certain point I felt like, uh, I, I, I'm too self-conscious to do this and sing and I would just freak me out.

• 31:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  And I real, and I remember that I met a guy at a, my sister dragged me to this birthday party and I met a guy, it was the only, it was the only birthday party where nobody else sang happy birthday, but one dude sang happy birthday and that was Corey Glover. And I called him and, and that was the beginning because I, I realized I needed somebody that could holler.

• 32:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  You know, and I, I could carry a tune, but I'm not a holler, I can't holler, right?

• 32:15Billy Corgan?

  He's got a big voice too, Corey.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  My God, yeah. So that was the beginning, you know, and, um, and, uh, and that was a real turn because we, you know, at that point, you know, Hilly Crystal used to book my band. We started to have

• 32:28Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  A bit of a, you know?

• 32:30Billy Corgan?

  That's a name I haven't heard for a while.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. And, uh, I'm proud to have been part of the CBGB's return.

• 32:37Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, we played there a few times. It was interesting.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And, um, yeah, and played over at, um, Irving Plaza. There were a few places where I, where I. Was opened for people. In fact, I opened for Fishbone, their very first show in New York. They were, they were young and completely insane. I'd never seen.

• 32:59Billy Corgan?

  One of the greatest shows I've ever seen was Fishbone.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  I there was Chris Dowd used to, because he's the keyboards and trombones, right? So they would run around, everything is happening, everyone's running around and Chris Dowd used to, he would play trombone part. He would take the trombone and throw it over his head backwards, not looking. And Rhodey would catch it and he would go play a keyboard part. And then the Rhodey would throw the trombone. And he would, and the trombone is sailing and he would go and catch the trombone and go right into.

• 33:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  His part, it was.

• 33:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  I used to hate doing shows with them.

• 33:37Billy Corgan?

  So, um.

• 33:40Billy Corgan?

  Just in a simple way, you know, you're coming from this very, uh. Amorphous musical sort of landscape, you know, you're, you're playing whatever you want and why wouldn't you?

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:54Billy Corgan?

  And then somewhere along the way, and I know I'm jumping, but because it's not immediate. You know, you end up in a band that is ultimately a commercial band. I'm not saying it was meant to be commercial, but it becomes commercial.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:09Billy Corgan?

  How did you get there? Cause that's, that's, that's a leap that I don't make intellectually very easily.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  I don't think, I don't think any, I think, um.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  I think it's of, it's, I think it's weird. And I think that, um, I tell no, no, think about it like we were. I mean, that first record Vivid. Is all over the place. And part of the reason. It's all over the place is because of the Beatles. Not that, not that. Anything sounds like the Beatles, but the thing about the Beatles, when I was a kid, I was, I was a little kid, I saw them on the Ed Sullivan Show.

• 34:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  So they start out with, I want to hold your hand.

• 34:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Right?

• 34:56Speaker 01

  And they wind up with Revolution Number Nine, like that.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Change, like the fact that the Beatles over the time period.

• 35:06Billy Corgan?

  And not that long a time.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  And was a and they changed radically. They changed and that was what this is before I'm a musician, right?

• 35:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  It just struck me like thinking about the first time I heard Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds on AM radio. I remember thinking that's that's the same band that did I want to hold.

• 35:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  And and I didn't even I didn't have a grand design at that, but it really it was weird to me. It was weird that those same people.

• 35:40Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Are doing that. That didn't. That didn't happen. And the one thing that um, the the greatest legacy of the Beatles is that they gave artists the permission to change.

• 35:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I agree with that.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Completely aside from their harmonies, all the wonderful things of their music, but they gave musicians that permission.

• 36:07Billy Corgan?

  Well, they broke they broke this very codified system that you were good at this one thing, you did the one thing until the wheels fell off. And then when the wheels fell off, you looked around and saw what everybody else was doing. Then you got in behind that and that's the way the music business went and a lot of talented people. Unless you were a savant like a James Brown or a an Elvis, you couldn't survive it.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:33Billy Corgan?

  And that's why the music business just chewed these people up and spit them out. Or they become like parodies of themselves.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it's it's it's a real it's a real thing. And you know, like the magical even more than Sarge, but magical mystery tour is like a experimental. It's it's an experimental rock record.

• 36:51Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  That has singles. I mean, that's basically what it is.

• 36:54Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  So anyway, all of that, all of that to say. When it came to.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Making our first record, I didn't think about, well, we play a style and that style determines what everything is. It was like, we have songs and the songs kind of determined, you know, like Broken Hearts. Like I had this notion of I wanted, I wanted to mix kind of a hip hop thing with a country and western.

• 37:20Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  And that, you know, um, I wanted to cover The Talking Heads because I fell in love with The Talking Heads from Fear of Music.

• 37:29Billy Corgan?

  Was everybody in the band sort of on board with this idea of this

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:33Billy Corgan?

  colleague lot approach?

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz I was kind of like going, yeah, man, let's try, cuz at that point they were willing to listen to me. So you have a brief window, bro. You have a brief window when your compatriots are willing to listen. You have a brief window, so shit. And while they're willing to listen, then make, make hay, make hay while you may, right? So, so, uh, they, it was kind of like we went with it and, um, like the Talking Heads thing, you know, I, I knew that they had history with, with CBGB's and I fell in. I love the David Byrne thing and the, you know, and Adrian Blue, you know, the Remain in Light, all that stuff. But before that, they had this record Fear of Music. And I was listening to Memories Can't Win. I said, I think I could do something. I think this could work.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  You know, it was based around the, the, the kind of bassline. I said, you know, this, we can make this happen.

• 38:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  And I brought it into rehearsal and I said, hey, man, play this, play that. And we did it and we, and CBGB's was our laboratory. So we would, you know, we were right there on eleven oh two Broadway in Brooklyn, you know, in Bushwick. And, you know, we straight shot over the Winsburg Bridge, you know, turn, you know, go right, you know, on Bowery and you're right there, you know, so. So like even with Coat, Coat was written in one rehearsal. And for me, that's one of the greatest, not because that it was a hit, but because from the moment I stumbled on the riff.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  And I yelled it was, yo man, put a beat to this. And then suddenly, the song assembled itself, using us to do it. It's the best way I could describe it.

• 39:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  We didn't get in the way. We didn't, nobody went on a trip. We, we went, we went where the song took us.

• 39:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  And we had it at the other end. And, and really, I give our producer at Stasium, a huge amount of credit. Because, you know, when, when we first did it, it was kind of like, like, the bridge was, was, I had this whole intro with the bridge. And then we did this bridge thing. And then we played the sample and then we played the riff.

• 39:45Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Right? So it was kind of proggy, right?

• 39:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  And then he said, yo man, this is taking too long to get to the riff, you know? Let's get to the, and you know, at first, the first iteration of it, it was, it was Martin Luther King, free at last, free at last. Thank Almighty, we're free at last. We couldn't clear with the King, King Foundation. And I was in Harlem, I was walking around and I heard the speech, you know, they, and you know, there was like a, you know, cats were selling all kinds of stuff. And they had like, guy had a boombox and he was, I heard, let's write, you know, in a few months we have left, let's talk right down to earth in a language that everybody can easily understand. I was like, I want that cassette. I went and I swapped it. And it turned out that my, my first wife was very close with one of Malcolm's daughters, Malak, Malak Shabazz.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  And this is while we were dating before, and they'd show, she used to come out to see us.

• 40:37Billy Corgan?

  Oh, wow.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  You know, so I swapped this thing, she thought, man, that's great, that's my dad, da, da, da, da. And then, you know, and we were allowed to do it. And then, uh, and, uh, and, and the rest is history. And we played a Saturday Night Live, which was funny.

• 40:51Billy Corgan?

  By the way, you're, you're, let's see, April 1st, 1989, there it is.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Ha, right? We, when we were there.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  I didn't know that they had found tape of Malcolm.

• 41:07Billy Corgan?

  Oh, they did that thing. Yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  They they they found.

• 41:10Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  Uh, they they found.

• 41:12Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I saw that and I didn't. I thought you guys did that.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 41:15Billy Corgan?

  Oh, wow.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  They did that and I was so shocked because we do. You do a run through and.

• 41:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, you do a live.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  You do a live, you do a live.

• 41:24Billy Corgan?

  With the crowd, yeah.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  With the crowd, but they didn't. And then when we were live TV and then.

• 41:29Billy Corgan?

  Oh, they did it when they only did it when it was live live?

• 41:31Speaker 01

  They did it when it was live and then something Malcolm X is on the screen. I was like, holy shit. You know, I was.

• 41:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  I was like.

• 41:36Billy Corgan?

  And oh, by the way, you're about to go live.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  And I'm about to, you know, I mean.

• 41:39Billy Corgan?

  Twenty million people.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  You know?

• 41:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  And I remembered, oh, yeah, we're doing this. And I went into it and then it was okay, you know, but that was.

• 41:47Billy Corgan?

  So I wa- I was watching that night, um, and I and I remember, I think I'd heard the song before I saw you guys play it live. But, um, I remember thinking two things like, wow, this is really good. You guys sounded great. And then I was like, why is he wearing like a yellow Cory?

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Oh, Cory.

• 42:05Billy Corgan?

  Why is he wearing like the yellow banana?

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Oh, you mean the the body glove?

• 42:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  The body glove thing that was, you know, that was it was it was his thing, bro. It's his thing. It was his thing.

• 42:16Billy Corgan?

  Um.

• 42:19Billy Corgan?

  So you know, and I know there's that moment where the bomb goes off. It's like, boom, suddenly now you got new friends.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:27Billy Corgan?

  The cousin that hasn't talked to you in seven years is on the phone.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:31Billy Corgan?

  I'm not asking you to talk about that necessarily. I'm more interested in how it affected your musical vision. Are you thinking, great, like, now this other world's open to me and I get to bring all these great ideas into it. Does you?

• 42:46Speaker 01

  It it felt, um,

• 42:49Speaker 01

  surreal.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  You know, because when you're used to struggling,

• 42:55Speaker 01

  you know, you're walking uphill in both directions, right?

• 42:57Billy Corgan?

  You really like. Well, you ever do that where you're you're arguing with somebody and they agree with you and you keep arguing?

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And, um, suddenly, um, and it was it was it was a challenge. I felt we met that challenge in our second record, uh, Time's Up, but it was, um, it was it was very weird. It was it was it was weird. It was like it was weird. It's been weird the whole time on a level.

• 43:23Billy Corgan?

  Well, that's why I was asking you because, um.

• 43:28Billy Corgan?

  And I'm saying this with humility to you because I know you now a bit as a person too. And, and we'd never really hung out before recent times, but I used to hang out with Corey here.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:42Billy Corgan?

  So I, I got to know Corey a bit back in the day. And I certainly appreciated the band and, but I think I always viewed you through the prism of kind of an outside cat playing rock and roll.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:56Billy Corgan?

  Similar to Reeves playing with Bowie.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:59Billy Corgan?

  Like you're kinda, I get you're from this other world, but it doesn't always fit.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:06Billy Corgan?

  Let me finish.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, please.

• 44:07Billy Corgan?

  So, but, uh, cause there's a point behind it. But until I really did the deep dive on you to talk to you today. Once I understood where you came from and where you've kinda ended up on your musical journey.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:22Billy Corgan?

  I was like, oh, his choices and the way he plays and who he is as a man, I totally get it. I never got you totally.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:33Billy Corgan?

  I had the respect.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:35Billy Corgan?

  But I couldn't quite, where does Vernon fit in? You know what I mean? It always felt a bit, and you don't strike me as a person, and now that I know you a bit, you don't strike me as somebody trying to be that guy. You know, sometimes people are trying to be edgy or different, or I'm the weird guy.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:51Billy Corgan?

  You're not that guy.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 44:53Billy Corgan?

  So, once I understood your musical journey, I was like, oh, it makes total sense. And in a weird way, and I hope you understand the context, living color is like almost the upside down world of everything else. So that's why when you say it was a surreal experience, I kinda get what you mean by that. Cause it's not necessarily what you were chasing.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:15Billy Corgan?

  We were chasing that. So we were whores. You know what I mean? We were, we were chasing that. And most of the people in our generation, our shared generation, were whores. You know, they were chasing whatever we were all chasing MTV or Rolling Stone or girls.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, girls.

• 45:33Billy Corgan?

  Your thing was a deeper kinda musical with.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:37Billy Corgan?

  So, is that, is that my saying?

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Well, well, ambition is a part of it. You wanna do well.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  But the funny thing is, I wanted to do what I wanted to do. I'm a very willful person.

• 45:49Billy Corgan?

  I noticed that.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Right? I wanted to do what I wanted to do, right?

• 45:54Billy Corgan?

  By the way, as you should. As you should. No, but I mean that. I mean, we, if all musicians thought that way, we'd have better music and we'd have less compromise. But they get in there with money and all sorts of things to kind of get you off that game.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So what are you, you know, and part of the thing is, okay, what are we talking about? And the thing that I'm, I mean, it's weird to me, but I'm also a lot of things we said on those early records were still grappling with them.

• 46:28Billy Corgan?

  Crazy, right? Thirty, thirty years later.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 46:31Billy Corgan?

  You could argue we're grappling with them more now than we were then.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  And you know, it's funny, man, I was listening to Bullet with Butterfly Wings. And it's one of my favorite pieces of yours and and I, it's so, it's so encapsulates a certain,

• 46:54Speaker 01

  it's so connected and it's so real. Like despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in the cage. And that, that, when you have this in intelligence, you know, when you know what it is.

• 47:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  It's different than if you're just, I'm mad, I don't know why, right?

• 47:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Okay, I get it. Yeah.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm, I'm just, I'm just, you're just given into, you know, but you're, but it's different

• 47:29Speaker 01

  when you see the game. And you

• 47:32Billy Corgan?

  Oh, well, then you're in it too.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  And you're, and you're, and it's like, and, and it's kind of,

• 47:39Speaker 01

  it's one of those things that,

• 47:44Speaker 01

  you know, talking about meta, right? Like you have a song about a thing and people dig it. And whatever the song is, right?

• 47:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  And that song could be a construct, right? But the songs that really get to us.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Are about something, whether it's crafted by a great songwriter or just a person.

• 48:07Billy Corgan?

  That's true.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Those songs that mean something, right? There's a reason why Wichita Lineman does what it does.

• 48:14Billy Corgan?

  One of the great songs of all time.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  It's a movie.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  I am a lineman for the county. As you're in the truck with that dude. As soon as that first line, you're in.

• 48:26Billy Corgan?

  What's that line he sings in there?

• 48:29Billy Corgan?

  And I know that I want you and I want you for all time.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  And I want you, I want you all the time. And the Wichita lineman is still on the line. It's a, it's one of the greatest songs about work. It's one of the greatest songs about work.

• 48:42Billy Corgan?

  Cause he's on a telephone pole.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Right. It's one of the greatest songs about loneliness. About desire and all those things, right? So for the most part, you come over, you have your hook, whatever. But what you, you wanted, there's a aspect of doing this.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  That you want the notion to come to your mind or the thing to come to you. That really is it, that really says.

• 49:10Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  The thing. And if you could say the thing, right? That's in the back of everybody's heads. They can't, they can't speak it. They can't, they can't even begin to think it.

• 49:21Billy Corgan?

  All you need is love.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  All you need is love. And, and that's, and that's so obvious.

• 49:28Billy Corgan?

  But he says it's.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  But he says it's like, it's kind of like, it's kind of like hearing the, the Rift of Seven Nation Army. The first thing you do is slap your forehead. You're like, it's, it's like, are you kidding?

• 49:38Billy Corgan?

  We all, we all went.

• 49:40Billy Corgan?

  We all went, why didn't I think of that?

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Why do you know, it's like, what the, are you kidding me? Like, and that's what, that's what it is though. That's what it is. And it's right there that, you know, how many songs are based on like a minor third, right? And you think that that's over, right? And it's like, you know.

• 49:54Billy Corgan?

  That's Sabbath, right?

• 49:55Speaker 01

  I mean. Hey, that's Sabbath, that's Prince, that's, you know, it's like gang, that's a gang of tunes, right?

• 50:02Billy Corgan?

  You guys were signed to Epic, right?

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Yes, 550.

• 50:04Billy Corgan?

  I mean, that crowd was pretty rough back in the day. That that was that whole Sony Epic.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

• 50:12Billy Corgan?

  So were they on you guys hard?

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Well, we were, you know what? We were, we were fortunate that Dave Glue came in when he came in. Because he came in from Atlantic and he saw us and he said, you know, I used to work, I worked with a band called Led Zeppelin. You know, name, right?

• 50:31Billy Corgan?

  Work with this.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  I have, you know, he's like, I have worked with the band. And then you hear that and go, okay. And he said, I hear something. He, he, the fact is, he put in the extra, he put in the extra thing, you know? When he saw that something came through that we, the first single, Middleman, you know, we got a little bit of radio playing. It was basically, you know, it's kind of like you get like two shots.

• 50:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  And that was back in the day. You had two shots. If they, if, if they're lucky, if, if you were connected, if you were somebody's nephew, you maybe got three.

• 51:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  But you got two shots.

• 51:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  A second shot was called.

• 51:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  And then immediately got phones and then.

• 51:14Billy Corgan?

  Big phones.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was, yeah, man, it was.

• 51:18Billy Corgan?

  But I'm saying after that.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Yes, after that, sure.

• 51:21Billy Corgan?

  Are they suddenly on you to be?

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you know, we had a certain amount of, um.

• 51:28Billy Corgan?

  I remember, sorry to interrupt you, but the sense I remember from the time is

• 51:35Billy Corgan?

  people kept trying to put you in this, like a box that didn't exist.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, with the Monday morning quarterbacking, right?

• 51:40Billy Corgan?

  It was like, kind of, well, where does this go? Or what is this band really about? And, you know, you've got a lot of people who don't understand the musical background.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:51Billy Corgan?

  The genetic aspect of it gets a little confusing in their minds. And then when you're talking about Black Rock Coalition, it's like, no, we're just playing music.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's also like, you know, that riff, I mean, I mean, if it wasn't for the Mahavishna Orchestra, that was that's like, that's like straight.

• 52:07Billy Corgan?

  I never thought of that.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  That's like, kind of like from like Intermountain.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  I mean, it's that influence, right?

• 52:13Billy Corgan?

  Oh, my God.

• 52:14Speaker 01

  You know, you know what I mean?

• 52:15Billy Corgan?

  I just, I'm, I think of speaking to Al D'Amilo and all that. I'm saying it's just that whole world, that whole world just.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:24Billy Corgan?

  It all comes back to me.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it was actually connected to this idea, the culture, you know, the idea of music. That was a window.

• 52:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Or a pathway to another reality.

• 52:35Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, it's kind of post in a lot of ways. Some aspect of the fusion thing is post.

• 52:41Billy Corgan?

  Okay, but that's a, that's a far cry from a hit single that's got big bones.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 52:46Billy Corgan?

  And now.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:48Billy Corgan?

  You're gonna make us money.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, but that's a, that's.

• 52:52Billy Corgan?

  Do you guys feel that pressure? Would you, were you able to?

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Well, I felt it because we were working all the time. And, you know, what are we gonna do next? The thing is, we had some other songs and I felt very.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  I knew that I didn't wanna, I, okay, so Prince does Purple Rain and then he does Around the World in a Day.

• 53:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Which is like, I think, I, like, people thought he lost it, right? At the time, but Around the World in a Day is brilliant.

• 53:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  It's brilliant.

• 53:26Billy Corgan?

  Mountains is on that record too.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, yeah.

• 53:29Billy Corgan?

  It's a beautiful song.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Uh, Condition of the Heart, you know, most. And, uh, in a way, I, I wanted to take what we did and.

• 53:38Billy Corgan?

  Kinda.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Expand, expand, you know, expand.

• 53:40Billy Corgan?

  Okay, but when you do that, cause I, sorry, I'm just.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:43Billy Corgan?

  I'm in the frame of, you know, record company PTSD.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  PTSD, yeah, right. Do it again. Give us another one.

• 53:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  They don't even know what you get, you, they don't know what you gave them the first time.

• 53:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  But they tell you, could you do that again? Right.

• 53:56Billy Corgan?

  So did you guys feel that pressure or you?

• 53:58Speaker 01

  I definitely did, but I, but I also felt like, um.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  It felt like to make that.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  This kind of feeling, um.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  That doing that again would be weird, would be false. Trying to make another.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  Because it's such an anomaly. It's like a song really about, you know.

• 54:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Polit, it's a very polit, it's, it's not about, it's about the. The polit- politics in its entirety. It's like, why do we? It's like not about left or right. It's like, why are you following that person? You're following that person. Why? You know, that's the thing. So to get to get to that again.

• 54:45Billy Corgan?

  My way and just seeing if this resonates with you. What I would do is I would jump so hard to another zip code. That I I wasn't even tempted to repeat the formula.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Right on.

• 54:56Billy Corgan?

  Cause I was trying to draw from a different well or something. So I was I'd force myself to be in alien territory and then have to kind of duke my way out.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:06Billy Corgan?

  Is that what you did?

• 55:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I felt like that. You mean, you know, it didn't, it didn't um work as well. On the second album, you know, but it it worked in the sense that

• 55:17Speaker 01

  it went to diff- like completely different, completely different areas like the we had like the song Lover Is This Ugly Head, which is like legitimate single in the UK. Didn't really take as well, but it's a completely different vibe.

• 55:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I'm, did you feel that the?

• 55:37Billy Corgan?

  Cause you know, alternative media back then wasn't necessarily the most sophisticated. Um, at least that was my experience. But uh, did you feel they understood the band, appreciated the band? Like, what was your relationship in that? Because the media at that point, it doesn't carry as much weight now, but back then it carried a lot of weight.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely did. It absolutely did. I I think um there was a certain amount, oh, you're black and that's great. You know, and it's like, well, you know, I mean, there's

• 56:04Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  like getting like, there were a few writers that got the band.

• 56:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  It really got what the band was and the and but most were focused on the surface things.

• 56:18Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that's what I'm after is like, because because it seems like if you're trying to make that shift, you know what I mean? And you're not necessarily getting the commercial gains that the record company is putting pressure on you to do. And you got a media that's either too lazy to really investigate the true. Depth of the band, or the message of the band, or even what the band truly represents.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:43Billy Corgan?

  You know, I remember, um, uh, we got to play some shows with Bad Brains when, when HR was out.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:52Billy Corgan?

  And, and the other guy.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Israel, Israel.

• 56:54Billy Corgan?

  Great, beautiful, beautiful cat, great guys. And just talking to them about music and, and just as a, I was already a fan and I'd seen them live a bunch of times, but like, to appreciate the depth of the band.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 57:07Billy Corgan?

  It made me love them even more.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 57:09Billy Corgan?

  Because those are deep cats.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Very deep, very deep.

• 57:12Billy Corgan?

  Right?

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, their reggae thing is, is, I mean, their hardcore thing is, but their reggae thing is legit, legit.

• 57:18Billy Corgan?

  That's what I'm saying is like, and you know, and again, I'm going back to my experience, but like, you know, you deal with the, you know, you crack the zeitgeist, right?

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 57:27Billy Corgan?

  You crack the zeitgeist and then you've got some lazy writer who, who defaults to the lowest hanging fruit.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:32Billy Corgan?

  Like, oh, you guys are black and you play rock. You know, you guys got your version of that. We got our version of it. It was like, oh, you got a girl in the band and like, you'd be like, what? This is like, not even.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 57:44Billy Corgan?

  It's not at the core of what we're after here. I mean, yes, it's a part of who we are. It's like saying the sky is blue.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:51Billy Corgan?

  But when they really miss the heart of the whole thing.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  I get it.

• 57:55Billy Corgan?

  And then they try to make the success or the interest in the thing, something that it's not, it's a surreal experience.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:02Billy Corgan?

  Okay, that's kind of what I'm asking.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  And that's what, and, and, and that's part of the thing, cause you, they have to fit you. It's, there's a, they have to fit you in the box.

• 58:14Billy Corgan?

  That's what I mean, yeah.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Right? And that's, and that's, and that doesn't, and that in and of itself is every band.

• 58:21Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Right?

• 58:22Billy Corgan?

  But, but, but what's unfair to you guys is I felt, I feel like they never even found a box that was close to the box.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  I know. Well, also, also the thing, the thing about it was kind of like, well, you're going to be sui generis, right? You're going to be one of one. There's only going to be one.

• 58:34Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  And, and, and that to me was, um.

• 58:37Billy Corgan?

  That's kind of almost kind of borderline offensive.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that was a real dragon, you know, particularly when I, I was listening to Fishbone. The other day and listening to Everyday Sunshine.

• 58:48Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  The song Everyday Sunshine. And I was like, you, you guys, you really are a California band. Like, like Everyday Sunshine is like, you're, I mean, weirdly enough.

• 58:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  I could see the connection to the Beach Boys.

• 59:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Like you're, like, you know what I mean? It's like, it's the regional thing of who you are.

• 59:09Billy Corgan?

  More so that back then in the day than now.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And, and, and it's funny, it's one of those things like, I knew that, but sometimes you have to hear it.

• 59:19Billy Corgan?

  You have to be reminded almost, yeah.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  You have to hear and go, oh, snap. That's, you know what I mean? As, as much as saying it's all like funny vibes is a very New York, East Coast thing.

• 59:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  You know, it's, it was, it really struck me, but to think, the thing that was a drag, um, you know, was that, that other artists who were coming up, you know, like Follow For Now, you know, they didn't, you didn't really get the shots that they, they didn't get the shots, they didn't get the investment. They didn't get, you know, the thing that we did, we did something really, you know, completely unexpected. And, and honestly, like, again, I say that with almost any band that, band that cracks a thing, it's unexpected, you know, but, but it didn't.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  Like what happened when Nirvana broke out, there was suddenly everything that was coming out of Seattle was getting a look, you know?

• 1:00:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  And that didn't really, I mean, it kinda, but not really, didn't really, that didn't really happen. And I remember I was, um,

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  I was really trying to get, um, a friend of mine, Michael Hill, incredible from the Bronx, it's great blues rock guitar player. And he had, he had this incredible band, Michael Hill's Bluesland. And I literally took the president and his wife to see them and they played a, they, they blew it up and, and, uh, he just was like, um, yeah, good. And he, and I was like, wow. And then he just,

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  and, and then honestly, it was not, um,

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  You know, I, he just didn't hear it.

• 1:01:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  And that's the, that's the thing. And then, at the same time, there's only so, you know, you can do a lot, you know, but you can only do so much. I remember us having 24/7 spies on tours with us, you know, on shows with us. We also toured with Bad Brains with Israel, which was, which is phenomenal, but the, I mean, it was, if, he was not HR.

• 1:01:33Billy Corgan?

  Well, HR is.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Well, HR is.

• 1:01:34Billy Corgan?

  He's a freak. I mean, he was, we want to talk about a true, we want to talk about a true rock star.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  That is true. That is.

• 1:01:40Billy Corgan?

  One of the greatest.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Billy Corgan?

  Frontmen ever.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:44Billy Corgan?

  Like.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, H, H, H, it is, I mean, H, the things we've seen H do on stage, like, like, standing back with somersault, like, what, like, wow, like, what, what, what did we just, what did we just see? When, when the Ritz moved to Studio 54, you know, Studio 54 had like this low balcony.

• 1:02:09Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  And I think they were playing, there was like the youth are getting restless. That was that tour.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  And I'm in the room.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  And so the balcony is low, the, the crowd is, is roiling, right? And then the first person leapt off the balcony into the pit and didn't die. And then all of a sudden, it was, this is the greatest mosh pit in a club I've ever seen. People start pouring off the back, the security guards could do nothing. Like, the people were running.

• 1:02:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it's too late.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  It was, it was a seething, roiling mass.

• 1:02:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  Of love.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Bonkers.

• 1:02:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  And that's, that's, that's H. He had, I believe, he had like a Bible. He had a Bible and he was pointing. He's like, he's pointing at a page in the Bible and he says.

• 1:03:08Billy Corgan?

  Um.

• 1:03:11Billy Corgan?

  And somewhere in the midst of all this insanity, now you you're doing Lollapalooza.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 1:03:16Billy Corgan?

  Welcome to Middle America.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  I loved it. Lollapalooza, nineteen ninety one.

• 1:03:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  Palindrome. Yeah.

• 1:03:24Billy Corgan?

  When you came, you'd had experiences, obviously, but when you came face to face with Middle America circa nineteen ninety one. Good, bad?

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  Well, you know what? Middle America was was being freaked.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Lollapalooza was like a traveling road show.

• 1:03:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  It was bands, but it was also underground comics.

• 1:03:50Billy Corgan?

  And poets.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  It was, and it was piercing and tattooing. It was piercing and tattooing. And I I will posit that body piercing

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  took hold in America because of that first.

• 1:04:09Billy Corgan?

  That's an interesting theory. I have to think about that one.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  They had they had like piercing stations and they had these people that professionals like very sterile. And they all were explaining what the different piercings were.

• 1:04:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  And the gauges and putting tubes in your ear and all that.

• 1:04:26Billy Corgan?

  Do you think that all came from?

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  And that, absolutely. I didn't see, suddenly I'm seeing postal workers with eyebrow rings. I'm telling you, I'm telling you, it didn't exist.

• 1:04:37Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  Didn't exist.

• 1:04:38Billy Corgan?

  That's why I gotta think about it.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  Like people, tongue piercings.

• 1:04:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Didn't exist in the mainstream. And that tour went across America and in its wake, that the beginnings of of the normalization of of piercings, I mean, really.

• 1:04:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Creative, extreme piercings started with that tour. Absolutely.

• 1:05:02Billy Corgan?

  So I don't really do gossip, so I'm not looking for the gossip side of the equation. But what are some of the forces that drove the band apart? Because I don't really know.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  Well,

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  I would say creative differences. How about that?

• 1:05:19Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Nah, it was.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  It was tough. I mean, the departure of our first bass player, Muzz Skillings,

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  was a was a much deeper was a much deeper wound than we were

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  prepared to deal with, you know, because men can't talk about their emotions. We just don't.

• 1:05:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  So he's out and then we auditioned a bunch of people and then we thought about like who's who's like one of the greatest cats that we know and Doug Wimbish, you know, he's ridiculous. He's ridiculous, you know? And

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  and then we went on to make Staying with Record, I'm very proud of. That first record with Doug is, I think is a great record.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  We didn't do a lot of inward looking.

• 1:06:18Billy Corgan?

  Was this because you guys were moving so fast?

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  Moving really fast.

• 1:06:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  And and in moving really fast, the communications were breaking down, you know? Communications were breaking down and not in a

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  not in a few kind of, you know, it's more subtle than that and I know I was going through, I personally was going through a disillusionment with, I don't know, man, I was going through a thing with

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  just the machinery of it.

• 1:07:02Billy Corgan?

  You're talking about rock machinery?

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  I was going through it.

• 1:07:06Billy Corgan?

  Well, rat in a cage, buddy.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  There you go. There you go.

• 1:07:11Billy Corgan?

  That was my way of dealing with it.

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:12Billy Corgan?

  I just wrote this song and I thought, God, I'm stuck.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  And and honestly,

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  yeah, and you and you did, I mean, Maybe a song would have helped, you know, but I was in a play, I was uh.

• 1:07:26Billy Corgan?

  Sorry, but it's a weird thing and I try to explain this to people sometimes is when the thing you love becomes like a monster. Because there's no way of separating the love and the monster and you're like, wait. And you know, and then you talk to your friends that go, well, this is what you wanted. You're like, well, I know it was gonna be like this. Well, you're making all this bread. You're like, well, that don't fix all this other stuff.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. Well, there's no there there. And it's the, I think, I think it's the wor- the worst part of it.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  Is when you, when you, your dream comes true.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  And parts of that dream are abyssal. Parts of that dream are nightmarish.

• 1:08:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  And to square that, I think so many people have been destroyed. So many people.

• 1:08:22Billy Corgan?

  Well, where do you go from there?

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:08:25Billy Corgan?

  Like, here's my analogy, you know, and this was about mid nineties for me, you know, I got to the top of a particular mountain. I thought it was the mountain.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:35Billy Corgan?

  But I got to the top of that mountain. I looked around, I thought, I'm really not anywhere at all.

• 1:08:42Billy Corgan?

  And I just spent the last, what, 10 years of my life.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:47Billy Corgan?

  Climbing the mountain with my little backpack.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:49Billy Corgan?

  You know, I get up there and I'm like, whoa, there's this whole other world. And by the way, there's about a gazillion people don't care.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:08:58Billy Corgan?

  You ain't gonna make them care. You got to deal with that math. You got this guy in your brain.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:02Billy Corgan?

  You got this bandmate going off the cliff.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:09:06Billy Corgan?

  And it's all moving real fast.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:08Billy Corgan?

  It's easy to talk about now, right? Because we've all been sort of, you guys are a major piece and you know, stuff, life moves on. Yeah, you get back, band back together and make music again. Everybody can hang out, but when it's in that.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  When you're in the crucible.

• 1:09:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that's, I love that word. That's, that's it. That is the word.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  When you're in the crucible of it and it's a, and it's a very, and it's a very, it makes itself important. It feels really important. And, and actually, that thing that there's, it's illusion.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Status, I mean, so much of it is about this, this.

• 1:09:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  Status and how people see you and who you are.

• 1:09:49Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  You come into this.

• 1:09:51Billy Corgan?

  If I can give you a compliment, one thing I always respected about you is, you know, when I first heard your name and of course the band, but, but it was a lot of talk about you as a guitar player. You know, typical gun guitar magazine stuff, gunslinger and, and I, I respect that you, you never seemed to bow to that pressure. You know, some guys feel they need to, or girls, they feel they need to kind of prove the, the myth making. They lean into it. I feel like it never changed you as a musician, like your, your integrity is intact.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  Well, you know, you want to do, I wanted to do my best. I want to find out who the hell I am. And I'm still searching. I'm still searching. I'm still searching. And I, and what's weird is like, is listening back.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  Because the self critic, the critic, the person is telling you that you ain't whatever that's in your mind, whatever is that?

• 1:10:42Billy Corgan?

  Sorry. How big's your self critic?

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  Oh, God, don't you know?

• 1:10:45Billy Corgan?

  Really?

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  But you know, but the thing is I'll go back.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  And I'll hear something. I go, man, you know, it's.

• 1:10:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  When you listen, aside from that.

• 1:10:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  I'll go back and say, man, man, I want to play like that dude. You know what I mean? I mean, there's a thing where you're. And this is part of the thing about the flow state and being in it for real. When you're in it for real.

• 1:11:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  And you know, and you know, when a show, it's kind of like shows, you know, when a show is going is great. Everyone is invested.

• 1:11:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  And everybody is in it and they're in it for whatever happens, for whatever happens. And

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  shows can be pantomimes.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  They can be pantomimes.

• 1:11:43Billy Corgan?

  And we all know how to do it at some point.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and there's the, because there's the rock and roll pantomime.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  Let's.

• 1:11:52Billy Corgan?

  Hello, Cleveland.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Let's boogie. Hello, Cleveland, right?

• 1:11:55Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  And it's like church, right? It's like anything where let's do it. The thing is, when the Holy Ghost is terrifying, right? When that spirit enters, when that spirit enters, right?

• 1:12:09Billy Corgan?

  It's chaos, yeah.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  It's another, that's another thing. When you, when you are, when you're, when everyone is there.

• 1:12:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  It's a high, it's a, it's a thing. Really, we are greater than the sum of our parts. I mean, the band, the crew, the front of house guy, the dude. Everybody's hands on the faders are moving as if on their own accord. The, I mean, the.

• 1:12:36Billy Corgan?

  That's, that's why we can rehearse for weeks and we can never approximate gig, gig condition.

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  Well, this is, this is why sound checks are deadly, right? Everybody knows, right? The universe makes no distinction between sound check and gig, right?

• 1:12:48Billy Corgan?

  You're killing me right now.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, when you go and say, yeah, yeah, when you go and you, and you start getting that hump in your back and you know me? Stop, stop, stop. Don't do it, right? Stop. When the gig, when he.

• 1:13:02Billy Corgan?

  Saving for the gig.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  You know, that chunk, that, stop it. It meet, stop the sound check immediately because it's not going to happen on the gig.

• 1:13:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  It's not gonna, you think that's, sound checks. It's better for a sound check to suck.

• 1:13:16Billy Corgan?

  You're killing me right now.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  It's a universal constant. If the sound check is great, the gig is gonna be meh.

• 1:13:24Billy Corgan?

  Okay. This is a meta question.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:13:33Billy Corgan?

  This is what I wrote. Talk about notoriety and influence versus integrity. And what I mean by that is, and for some reason, I thought of this.

• 1:13:47Billy Corgan?

  Duke Ellington circa 1970, playing a Beatles medley on the Ed Sullivan Show.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:54Billy Corgan?

  One of the greatest composers of the 20th century.

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Billy Corgan?

  Is at some point reduced.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  All right. Well, to be, I mean, everybody was like the mop heads, right? Nobody, you know, they were like, they were like, you know, and then suddenly the tunes, I mean, the tunes, I mean, Ella Fitzgerald was singing those tunes, you know what I mean?

• 1:14:10Billy Corgan?

  Sure. But what I'm saying is, is you've, you've had multiple lives as a musician. You know, you've been on the cover of the Guitar Magazine, you've been that guy. You were Saturday Night Live, you were that guy, but then you were playing with these great, you know, avant garde musicians that are not household names, you know?

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  Right, sure.

• 1:14:29Billy Corgan?

  So you've experienced the wider width of musical experience where most people in rock, it's sort of a one lane highway.

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 1:14:37Billy Corgan?

  Up and down.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:41Billy Corgan?

  So I don't know why I thought in relation to you, but you know, there's something that hurts my heart, as great as the Beatles are.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:48Billy Corgan?

  That Duke Ellington would be reduced.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:14:50Billy Corgan?

  To playing a Beatles medley on the Ed Sullivan Show.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a dog.

• 1:14:55Billy Corgan?

  Instead of his own medley.

• 1:14:57Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. And that's the, and that's.

• 1:14:59Billy Corgan?

  Instead of Satin Doll, he's playing, you know, Yesterday.

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, because, um, because it's a youth culture.

• 1:15:06Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  And it's a youth culture and it's, it's about what's, you know, it's about next.

• 1:15:11Billy Corgan?

  Are you okay with that type of stuff or is that stuff rubbing?

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Whether or not, whether or not I'm okay with it, it's a state that exists. And, and to a certain degree.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  I mean,

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  really being there for what would you have to say? Cause

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  playing our truth, playing our truth and whether or not people are willing to hear it. Those are two separate, two different things. They're two different things.

• 1:15:42Billy Corgan?

  Well, it's called trained playing interstellar space, right?

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  Right. But it's also, um, you know, if Ellington finds some merit in what those mop heads were doing, fair enough. If he feels reduced, right?

• 1:15:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  That's the thing, the internal, it's like.

• 1:16:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, maybe that's my own, maybe that's my own.

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  Because the jazz guys, right? You know, there's also a thing where, you know, I'm superior to this music, right?

• 1:16:11Billy Corgan?

  Remember when everybody freaked out because Miles was playing Cyndi Lauper?

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  He liked, but he loved that tune.

• 1:16:17Billy Corgan?

  But that's the point.

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, but everybody else, see, that's the thing.

• 1:16:20Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  Everybody else was projecting Miles. You, you, you know, he's, he's playing that.

• 1:16:25Billy Corgan?

  But that's what I'm saying. Maybe I'm projecting on Duke Ellington. Maybe he was happy to get the gig because he was going to sell more tickets.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  Well, I, I tell you what, man, when the Pulitzer, when the, you know, he was, you know, uh, you know, he was snubbed. You know, for, I think it was a Pulitzer, Pulitzer Prize for music. He was snubbed, you know? And, uh, and, and he said, oh, you know, the thing is they, they just didn't want me to get too famous, too young. And he was 70 years old when he said that. You know, he's, he's somebody he'd been told to enter through the kitchen.

• 1:16:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And he was the greatest living composer at that time. You know, to the fact that he absorbed all of that. And it's like the, you know, okay, it's the same thing.

• 1:17:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  You know, and.

• 1:17:04Billy Corgan?

  I just want to know where you fell on that. Spectrum is not the right way to put it, you know?

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:09Billy Corgan?

  Some people are okay with like, live to fight another day, the survival of it all.

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, the feeling, I mean, it really is about the spirit, the spirit in which it's happening.

• 1:17:19Billy Corgan?

  Thank you. That's a beautiful answer because this is something I've always appreciated about you is for what you've dabbled in, you don't, you don't have a snob vibe to you. And I'm, I'm very picky about that with musicians.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:33Billy Corgan?

  Because I grew up with a musical father.

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:17:36Billy Corgan?

  And my father was extremely snobby about other guitar players.

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:17:43Billy Corgan?

  And I appreciated why my daddy was snobby, but at the same time, it was born of a certain bitterness because he never made it through.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  He never got, he didn't get the thing.

• 1:17:51Billy Corgan?

  And, you know, uh, once you get up here in the weird, rare air of accomplishment, whatever that means, because it's obviously so many different people have different qualifiers. One person's success is another person's failure. But, you know, we've, we've, people know our songs, at least, though you can point to one thing.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, they can point to something.

• 1:18:10Billy Corgan?

  Uh, every time CM Punk comes out, you know, there you are.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  Ah, I love him.

• 1:18:14Billy Corgan?

  From Chicago.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:16Billy Corgan?

  Um, I'm just trying to say is like,

• 1:18:21Billy Corgan?

  how we perceive the machinery, the slights, the bull, the compromise, you know what I mean? You seem to have kind of landed in a very safe place. I, I can't imagine it was easy, but you seem to come out through the fire pretty intact.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:18:38Billy Corgan?

  Is that fair?

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  It is fair, but I mean, it's, everything costs, magic costs. If you're gonna work with magic, it's gonna cost you.

• 1:18:50Billy Corgan?

  I, I knew this Tibetan woman. And she said, be careful what you wish for in this life, because you're gonna pay for it in the next.

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's a, that's, that's, that's a thing, you know? And, um,

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  it's kind of like, we've seen people incredibly talented, beautiful people, um,

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  suffer.

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  They suffered, you know? But I mean, Amy Winehouse suffered for her truth.

• 1:19:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  You know, she, I mean, she gave a great gift to the world with rehab. She gave a great gift, but she really was struggling.

• 1:19:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  And, and, and, and in the end.

• 1:19:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I get you.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  And you know, that's, that's the thing. I mean, you know, you can look at a Chris Cornell. And so Chris Cornell, man.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  I mean, he's handsome, he's rich, he's talented, he's got all the things. Every, any, by any measure, you look at.

• 1:19:48Billy Corgan?

  And a beautiful family.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  And beautiful, you look at that guy and he's been telling his songs. He'd been telling us the whole time that he was struggling. You know, like suicide for the, I mean, I, the, the song, The Day I Tried To Live broke me down. I mean, the, what, the day I tried to live.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  Was, I, it would so hit the mark.

• 1:20:12Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  Of where I was.

• 1:20:14Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:20:14Speaker 01

  Because that final line, you know, they tried to, you know, ju- just like you. And it just, the truth of it.

• 1:20:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  And that's the beauty of, of what we're capable of doing, of bringing.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  But again, like I said, you know, the songs that move, that matter are about something for real.

• 1:20:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  They are, whether, however the craft, they are. And we never think about the fact that the people that build those artifacts, they are paying a price.

• 1:20:48Billy Corgan?

  That's true.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  They are paying a price for it. And it's very, the part, the thing about it, the, you know, i- is the ultimate conditional love. That's this, this thing that we, that we're in, that we do. It is, the love is real, but it's completely with conditions.

• 1:21:06Billy Corgan?

  You're hitting me right there, boy.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  It's complete, it's completely.

• 1:21:09Billy Corgan?

  I feel that.

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  It's completely with conditions. And if you don't fulfill the conditions, it can be withdrawn, it will be withdrawn.

• 1:21:17Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  And, um.

• 1:21:19Billy Corgan?

  It's very transactional.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  It's, it's the, the transactional, the, the transactional, and, and, and it's, it's almost unnecessary.

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  We have to be in a place.

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  A very, um, we have to be in a place.

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  Where we're able to maneuver and acceptance, we have to have a radical acceptance.

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  And not take it personally.

• 1:21:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  Because when the love is withdrawn, you know, you're too old, you're the wrong color. You're not fashionable, rock is out, whatever is out.

• 1:21:59Billy Corgan?

  What's that Earth, Wind & Fire song? Is it after the love is gone or after the fire is gone?

• 1:22:03Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? After the love is gone, after the love is gone, you know, how could you lead me on? You know what I mean? And that's the, that's a, there's a cold truth to it and, and you know, many people. You know, I'm sorry. I mean, I, I think I can't, I can't list, I can't like Whitney Houston, the greatest love of all is, is, is very difficult.

• 1:22:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  To hear. She didn't write that song, but the greatest love of all. You know, it's, you know.

• 1:22:35Billy Corgan?

  I get you.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  You, you know what I mean? We, we know and we.

• 1:22:38Billy Corgan?

  Well, we feel it.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  We feel it and it's, and, um, and, uh, basically, you know, what we do, you know, how do we move forward? How do we say what we need to say? How do we play what we need to play?

• 1:22:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:49Speaker 01

  To whoever is willing to check it.

• 1:22:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:53Billy Corgan?

  Okay. A few more things.

• 1:23:00Billy Corgan?

  I saw that you wrote a thing about AI and I'm sure you're getting asked a lot about it.

• 1:23:05Speaker 01

  I.

• 1:23:05Billy Corgan?

  I'm getting asked a lot about it.

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:08Billy Corgan?

  So I want to get your, just a general take on AI.

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  Well, we've created an entity. I mean, we've wanted the alien to enter into our lives for the longest time. We've been asking.

• 1:23:18Billy Corgan?

  You're making me laugh.

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  We've been begging for it. We've been, we've, we've been begging for it. We've been, we've been entertaining ourselves with the science fiction scenario.

• 1:23:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  And now we have achieved it. Now we've achieved, now we have achieved what we've been begging for. We've been entertaining ourselves.

• 1:23:39Billy Corgan?

  So where does it go?

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  Well, capitalism, capitalism. Okay, so I'm not a Luddite and I'm not anti-AI, right? But the problem, just like zombies in The Walking Dead, the problem is what humans do, the zombies never change.

• 1:24:01Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  The problem is who we are and how we, you know, how we weaponize.

• 1:24:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  The fact that people are having AI-induced psychosis where they, because.

• 1:24:13Billy Corgan?

  Already, yeah.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. And because part of the thing is people are jumping to the AI to fulfill things because we've become so acrimonious and contemptuous of each other in relationships.

• 1:24:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:26Speaker 01

  So now people are forming relationships with their telephone. Well, you know, that was the thing of, uh, you know, the thing of her, right?

• 1:24:35Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  That is hap- like, that is happening with a much less advanced version.

• 1:24:42Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  Of the thing in the movie. This is an actual thing that's going on and the anthropomorphism that's already in effect.

• 1:24:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  Is not going to be less complicated. It's not going to become, you know, like the invisible, like, you know, the imaginary friend. Now the imaginary friend.

• 1:25:01Billy Corgan?

  Is real.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Is real. So now, you know, and, and children are gonna have companions they tell their secrets to.

• 1:25:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Well, wait, wait till the spiritual part of it all kicks in.

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  Oh, well, that's, well, that's the ultimate.

• 1:25:12Billy Corgan?

  We got AI god.

• 1:25:14Speaker 01

  Well, that's the ultimate, that's the ultimate.

• 1:25:17Billy Corgan?

  Maybe that's the ultimate nascent human desire for destruction is to create an AI god.

• 1:25:21Speaker 01

  Well, I'm, I'm surprised that there hasn't, that there hasn't been, um, up to this point, a fatwa or, or religious edicts.

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  Aimed at AI. It's because AI is, at a certain point.

• 1:25:40Billy Corgan?

  Ah, wow. You're blowing my mind, yeah.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  And this is.

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  When they're talking about superintelligence, right? What else are they talking about? What else are we talking about? If we're talking about a superintelligence, what else is God but a superintelligence?

• 1:25:57Billy Corgan?

  Well, it is the the superintelligence. And so you're talking about something that's in competition, right? Which is why you're blowing my mind.

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  Exactly, but it's in competition when you're on your knees, praying to the God of the Bible or God of the Torah or, you know, the Bhagavad Gita, you know what I mean? Or the Quran. That dialogue is happening. Now we've created or we're in the process of creating an entity that will answer you, that will speak to you, that could quote any of the, any of the great sage books.

• 1:26:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, and synthesize them into something.

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  And synthesize and make it personal for you and, and give you your blessing custom, custom, customized for you.

• 1:26:50Billy Corgan?

  So I want to talk about your fantastic new record, Who Do Telemetry?

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:58Billy Corgan?

  The first thing that struck me was, and you tell me if you don't feel this because this is my version, but I was like, wow, he's finally done it. He's put it all in the same record. And it makes sense and I get it. Like, I don't have to go looking for it. It's like, all right there.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:18Billy Corgan?

  Do you feel that?

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's all over the place like my mind and, and, and it's very much, a lot of, a lot of things that made me who I am went into the record. Various, the instrumental side of it and then the songs, you know, and the covers. And there's a bit of, Dealing with, you know, my past, like the politician, like my fandom, if you will.

• 1:27:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  Like, you know, and, and I talk about the weirdness of life, of my life, you know, I, I remember hearing, you know, sunshine of your love, like anybody was listening like a kid. And then as life would have it, I met Jack Bruce and, and then I was in a band with him and, uh, and I got to play in his band. Here's one of his projects and my favorite cream tune is politician. And, um, I loved every time we got a chance to play it, you know, as much as I love playing White Room or

• 1:28:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  Sunshine, you know, and, um, and again, I love the fact that the song doesn't, isn't about left or right. It is about that power and how power is, how power is wielded, but it's not, it's not heavy. It's not, it's, you know what I mean?

• 1:28:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:39Speaker 01

  It's kind of, you know, hey, baby, get into my big black car, right? And, um, yeah, so I, so I, I was really happy with the way that it came out.

• 1:28:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, but I think overall, again, playing record critic, but I, I just thought there's such a beautiful synergy going on because the things that you're interested in as a musician, they're so wide. And as somebody who's done records that have a lot of width in them, it's not easy to find. It, it's almost like got to be right place, right time, right

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  Right mind.

• 1:29:12Billy Corgan?

  Everything.

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:29:13Billy Corgan?

  And I feel you're in that. Do you feel that?

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  Well, I feel like, you know, the one thing about this record is that it's, it's really a curation. It's like some of these pieces are really go back a ways and I resurrected them. I wanted to.

• 1:29:27Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:29:28Speaker 01

  So there were some songs like, um, The Haunting. You know, I, I recorded that a long time ago and it was just really basically a drum track, my guitar and the vocalist, Kevin Webb. And then I, I listened to the tune and the vocals were recorded really, you know, if I do say my so, so, so myself, the vocals were recorded really well. So I said, you know, I want to put real drums for a real, put real bass.

• 1:29:52Billy Corgan?

  She went back and redid it underneath the vocal, huh?

• 1:29:54Speaker 01

  Underneath the vocal and it worked out really well because it's certainly.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  The influence of Prince, I loved Prince, you know, when he came out and, and, and there's a particular, you know, when Prince did these kind of very, not the grand gestures, but the very focused tunes like Pop Life, you know what I mean? Or Kiss, you know what I mean? It's a very, it's one thing and it's dope.

• 1:30:17Billy Corgan?

  I get it.

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  And the haunting, I mean, the basically is about the fact that, that we are our own ghosts, you know, like we're haunted by missed opportunities, by the, by the email we didn't answer, by, we're haunted by the thing we didn't do that we always wanted to do. And that's what the haunting is, is about that. And, you know, and again, throughout the record, there are things like Beautiful Bastard. Beautiful Bastard, I got to work with the wonderful Rashid on vocals. But that was about, that was about a particular relationship. There was a woman in my life who, um, we were not good for each other. And it was

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  just one of these things that she was, she was extraordinary, but I wasn't my best self. And at a certain point, I had to grapple with it, you know, and, and that's kind of where, because also it's all about language, because bastard, right? Bastard is gendered. You know, we think of bastards as being men.

• 1:31:21Billy Corgan?

  Ah, that's true.

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  Right? And actually that, you know, and that's not the case. That's not the case of the, you know, your parents weren't married, so you're a bastard.

• 1:31:30Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  But, you know, we, we, it's pejorative, you know, your particular, you know.

• 1:31:36Billy Corgan?

  I saw this thing, because you were talking about politician and Jack Bruce, where you went to his funeral.

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:31:43Billy Corgan?

  And you said that they had his bass up there.

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:46Billy Corgan?

  And I loved you said, uh, it was a riderless horse.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  Like a riderless horse.

• 1:31:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:58Billy Corgan?

  I had a way to put what I was trying to ask here.

• 1:32:03Billy Corgan?

  What has riding your horse for 50 years taught you?

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  Well, get off.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  You know, it's funny, having the guitar, you know, like, we've both been guitars for a long time, right? And having this thing in our lives.

• 1:32:26Billy Corgan?

  And it is a thing.

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  And it is a thing, right? And it's so, it's the most vexatious, frustrating, beautiful, fabulous.

• 1:32:35Billy Corgan?

  I just see me smashing guitar endlessly into the ground.

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  You know, and it's, and the thing, and it's kind of like, if we're available to the possibilities of it, it's, there's nothing like it, like, and, and the thing is, we, everything's been done. Well, not actually, not everything, but, I mean, extraordinary, I mean, you know, you see Tim Henson, I mean, he needs guitar players, mind boggling.

• 1:32:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  But you know?

• 1:33:00Billy Corgan?

  Or what's that kid, uh, he's not a kid anymore, but, uh, is it a Bosse type?

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  Oh, the Tosin, uh, Tosin Abasi.

• 1:33:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, his name always stresses in my mind. I mean, I saw him play.

• 1:33:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's ridiculous.

• 1:33:13Billy Corgan?

  I mean, just like.

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  Tosin Abasi, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I know, but, but the thing about it is when I see the super, these incredible, you know, nobody, none of them is with Pop Staples playing with his daughters. All right? Like Pop Staples.

• 1:33:27Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  Playing in the Staples Singers with that, you know, little tremolo behind Mavis. Nothing is messing with that.

• 1:33:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I did it.

• 1:33:36Speaker 01

  A better, a better guitar player is not messing with them.

• 1:33:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I did a charity event with Mavis and we sat and talked about a bunch of stuff, but we talked for a long time about her father.

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:33:46Billy Corgan?

  Because I, if you really listen to the Staples Singers, everybody focused on Mavis because amazing, one of a kind voice.

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:33:53Billy Corgan?

  But the real thing in that whole thing was the dad.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. She's extraordinary, I mean, I would say,

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  you meet good people and Mavis Staples.

• 1:34:09Speaker 01

  Exudes well being. She is so, when I met her.

• 1:34:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:15Speaker 01

  I just like, wow, you know.

• 1:34:18Billy Corgan?

  Well, there's a reason Bob Dylan wanted to marry her.

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  Right. Which is, which is, which is one of the great, where's that Rom com?

• 1:34:28Speaker 01

  Where is that Rom com?

• 1:34:29Billy Corgan?

  Somebody should make that movie.

• 1:34:31Speaker 01

  Oh, I know. There's, yeah.

• 1:34:33Billy Corgan?

  Okay. So again, kudos on the, on your record.

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:34:37Billy Corgan?

  These don't always air in time. So when people see them, please check out your record. Because it's really, it's really an accomplishment. I have great respect for what you did.

• 1:34:49Billy Corgan?

  Last thing, because we, we shared this now, we were part of Ozzy's last concert.

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:55Billy Corgan?

  Sabbath's last concert.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:57Billy Corgan?

  With Oz and we had this incredible three days of musical fraternity.

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:03Billy Corgan?

  It was such a beautiful moment, but I just want to kind of get your reflections on that a bit.

• 1:35:07Speaker 01

  Well, none of us knew.

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  None of us knew that it was actually going to be the last time.

• 1:35:16Billy Corgan?

  That's true.

• 1:35:17Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:35:19Speaker 01

  And that. It was profound at the time. Because if you hadn't seen Ozzy in a long time, what you, the health challenges were right there.

• 1:35:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  In, in front of us.

• 1:35:33Billy Corgan?

  We saw it behind the scenes too.

• 1:35:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:35Billy Corgan?

  Which was even more stark because you're right there.

• 1:35:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  The adoration, the love, the respect.

• 1:35:46Speaker 01

  For him and all incredibly well deserved.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  To hear.

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  War pigs for the last time. Was. Unbelievable. To be, you know, to. I mean. Just the emotions going back and forth. And to see him on the black throne, taking it in. And to be part of, like since fraternal order, which was really, I mean, it's metal, but it was really, he transcended. He transcends, he transcends that.

• 1:36:25Billy Corgan?

  Absolutely.

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  I mean, um.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  It was incredible and it was beautiful. It was beautiful because everybody was on their best be like there was rare. We were on our best behavior. Nobody was, nobody was there to act out.

• 1:36:43Billy Corgan?

  It was rare.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  Nobody was there to act out.

• 1:36:45Billy Corgan?

  For us behind the scenes, it was rare.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  It was, nobody was there to act out.

• 1:36:48Billy Corgan?

  I didn't see one ego moment over three days. And when you considered who was in the room.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:36:54Billy Corgan?

  That's shocking.

• 1:36:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, because people just, you know, because we're because it's tribal, it's all it, you know? It can get, it can get ill quickly. And.

• 1:37:04Billy Corgan?

  Or how about even just the, the person working for the person can start throwing their weight on.

• 1:37:09Speaker 01

  That's the other thing too. A lot of times.

• 1:37:11Billy Corgan?

  It ain't even, it ain't even.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  It's not the band. It's, it'll be if there's a, you know?

• 1:37:15Billy Corgan?

  Buddy, yeah.

• 1:37:15Speaker 01

  Because also, you know, the crews have history that we don't know, like people have been in different, you know?

• 1:37:21Billy Corgan?

  Or fired or.

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and that can go sideways quick. We see it on, we see it on package tours all the time.

• 1:37:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  This was, this was, um, I think people knew that this was a kind of holy event, you know? This was a kind of, you know? In its own black hearted way.

• 1:37:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  It was, it was really, really, really.

• 1:37:42Billy Corgan?

  And a big shout out to Tom Morello because Sharon named him sort of the musical director and what he did in putting us all together was really.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:51Billy Corgan?

  Was yeoman's work, to use an old phrase, but I mean, he, his heart was so in the right place about who was there and why they were there.

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:59Billy Corgan?

  And what he wanted that thing to say.

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely.

• 1:38:02Billy Corgan?

  He did a.

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  He did an incredible job.

• 1:38:05Billy Corgan?

  I have known Tom for over 30 years and, and it was one of his best days.

• 1:38:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Absolutely.

• 1:38:12Billy Corgan?

  So.

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, man. Um, quick shout out. You know what? We're taping this and, um, you know, we just lost, uh, D'Angelo.

• 1:38:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  And, um, who is also a keyboard, he was a guitarist as well as a keyboardist. Fabulous songwriter, singer.

• 1:38:31Billy Corgan?

  What a talent.

• 1:38:32Speaker 01

  Incredibly talented and, um, just wanted to acknowledge.

• 1:38:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, God bless.

• 1:38:37Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:38:37Billy Corgan?

  I saw him live one time and I just thought, wow, this guy's like. This is like Prince level talent.

• 1:38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:45Billy Corgan?

  And he hasn't even totally figured it out.

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:38:49Billy Corgan?

  And and maybe you could say he never totally figured it out, which is part of the story, but

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:54Billy Corgan?

  If you saw it and you saw it was there, it was kind of that thing of like, whoa, there's a lot going on.

• 1:39:00Speaker 01

  Plugged into he's plugged into the thing, you know, he's plugged into he's plugged into what Al Green was plugged in.

• 1:39:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:06Speaker 01

  He's plugged in, I mean, Prince was plugged into it, but he was plugged into it, not as a series of gestures, but as a lived breathing.

• 1:39:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Well, that's what's in a way, that's what's tragic about certain people is

• 1:39:21Billy Corgan?

  like Amy Winehouse, it's like a moth flame thing.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:26Billy Corgan?

  And some just never escape that.

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a velocity, there's a gravity, there's a

• 1:39:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  There's a, there's a, there's a feeling of fate. And occasionally, you know, an artist will arrive and what they do is so fragile.

• 1:39:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:39:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it's like egg fragile, right?

• 1:39:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and and they do this thing and the thing connects, whether it connects to

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  a small amount of people or whether it becomes a mass thing, right? They connect to something like when I first heard Billie Eilish, I said, every bored teenage girl in America has found their sign. She's like, she, when she first she's like, I'm over it. And it's like, and she can, she connected to that.

• 1:40:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I have a niece that's, it's, I joke, it's like all Billie Eilish all the time.

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  You know, and her.

• 1:40:26Billy Corgan?

  Billy, but to my niece who's had some, some times in her life.

• 1:40:31Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:40:33Billy Corgan?

  Billy gives voice to that thing.

• 1:40:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:38Billy Corgan?

  And I gotta respect it and I respect Billy as an artist anyway, but I'm saying is I gotta respect that for somebody in my own family. I see that.

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and when you see that, when you see that an artist is able to do that.

• 1:40:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:54Speaker 01

  For for, even if it's not your thing.

• 1:40:57Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:40:57Speaker 01

  When you see that this person.

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  Really has connected.

• 1:41:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:06Speaker 01

  It's something that you that.

• 1:41:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, sometimes when I'm being a bit glib, I, I, I say that, you know, musicians really are the priest class, you know what I mean?

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:41:16Billy Corgan?

  Somehow we're shifting the energies in there and, and because we got to work in these constructs, the media, the record company, you know, even the interview.

• 1:41:28Billy Corgan?

  There's a reductionist thing and that's all part of it, but at the end of the day, it never seems to encapsulate, encapsulate the expansiveness that is really at the heart of great music. And think of all the great artists that we've talked about today.

• 1:41:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:41Billy Corgan?

  Who just are able to reach through time and space. And um, it's a shame that maybe, you know, at this late date in popular music going now going on a hundred and plus years, that the, that the consciousness is not evolved to understand what it is that musicians really do.

• 1:42:01Speaker 01

  Well, it's terrible. I mean, it's not valued. It's been, it's been exploited. It's been exploited and part of the, the greatest danger that we face is the kind of been there, done that cynicism.

• 1:42:17Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 1:42:19Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:42:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:20Speaker 01

  We have to protect the wow.

• 1:42:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Okay. So last question, when you're doing cult personality part two.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  See there's.

• 1:42:26Billy Corgan?

  Ah, go, go. All right. God bless you. Thank you, friend.

• 1:42:32Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Billy. It's been a joy.

• 1:42:34Billy Corgan?

  Thank you.

• 1:42:41Speaker 03

  Hello, I'm Chris Richards, general manager at Saffron Volkswagen Richmond. I'm here to announce an exciting new program that I want you to listen to. Here's my friend Happy. Hi, I'm Happy Harry Turner, special finance manager at Saffron Credit.com. If you're in an open Chapter 13 bankruptcy, recently filed a Chapter 7, or you've been turned down because of credit challenges, don't give up. For nearly 30 years, I've helped people get reliable transportation when others said no. Visit Saffron Credit.com. Remember, I'm not happy unless you are.