Peter Asher | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Music legend Peter Asher joins Billy Corgan for a fascinating conversation spanning the British Invasion, the Beatles, Laurel Canyon, and the art of making timeless records. As one half of the chart-topping '60s duo Peter & Gordon, Asher looks back on his unforgettable years at Apple Records working alongside the Beatles, discovering James Taylor, and helping launch Linda Ronstadt's solo career. Billy and Peter dig into the craft of record production, the golden era of singer-songwriters, why a distinctive voice matters more than a perfect one, and the quiet relationships that shaped music history. Peter also explains why his greatest calling wasn't the spotlight but helping other artists find theirs. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:30Speaker 02

  Once I discovered what a record producer could do, you know, that you could hire musicians vastly better than yourself and tell them what to play, I thought that was brilliant.

• 1:38Billy Corgan?

  It's not not often that somebody will take themselves out of the spotlight and make it about somebody else.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  That's true, I suppose, yeah. But I would, that's what I was determined to do.

• 1:49Billy Corgan?

  We could literally just talk for hours about you as a producer.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  That era that we were on stage when it was all about screaming girls and stuff.

• 1:56Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah. You guys had the best era of them all.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  We did. We really enjoyed ourselves.

• 2:01Billy Corgan?

  And somewhere in your story, Paul McCartney moves into your house.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  I was driving down Sunset Boulevard in a rented Mustang convertible, being recognized by beautiful women. I kind of went, this is a little bit better. This is an improvement.

• 2:15Billy Corgan?

  Peter Asher, so nice to see you. Thank you for being here.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Good to see you too. Thank you.

• 2:19Billy Corgan?

  You know, we've had such an incredible, crazy life.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  We've been lucky.

• 2:24Billy Corgan?

  Yes, but I found myself at four this morning as I was doing my my research. Like, sort of, where do we begin? So I'll start here, if that's okay. It's the breakup of you and your partner, Gordon. It's about 68.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:43Billy Corgan?

  It seems like there was no sort of dramatic.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  No, there wasn't. In fact, we never, we didn't ever break up as such.

• 2:49Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  You know, we never had any.

• 2:50Billy Corgan?

  Just kind of stopped?

• 2:51Speaker 02

  We had any, we never had any kind of Everly Brothers-style actual bust-ups, let alone attacking each other on stage and all the crazy stuff they did. We gradually started doing other things. Gordon went to Australia for a while. He started acting. He was in the, he was the original Joseph in, in.

• 3:10Billy Corgan?

  Technicolor.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Original Pharaoh in Joseph.

• 3:13Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  He was the one who did it like Elvis, you know, which is always part of the, part of the part, because Gordon did a very good Elvis impersonation. And it wasn't really, it was 37 years or some ridiculous amount of time until we got back together. But as I say, we never actually said, we're never doing this again.

• 3:32Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  But I admit, as the, as the decades went by, I'd kind of naturally assumed, well, we're never doing that again. But we did. It was actually Paul Shaffer and his wife.

• 3:43Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Who caused that to happen. They were doing a benefit, wanted to do a benefit for Paul Shaffer's friend and our friend, too, Mike, what's his name? Jesus. The keyboard player in the Dave Clark Five, Mike Smith.

• 3:57Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Who was a terrific keyboard player and had a terrible accident, fell off his roof and needed help. And Paul Shaffer wanted to put the benefit together. And Paul's wife Cathy said, you know, it would be great if you could get Peter and Gordon back together and do a 60s-themed benefit. So he called me up and after a 37-year gap, it was evident to me that if we were ever going to do it, this would be the time. Because Paul Shaffer could be relied upon to put a great band together.

• 4:23Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  So we said yes.

• 4:25Billy Corgan?

  So there was no sort of singular moment where you're like, okay, that's done?

• 4:28Speaker 02

  So the ending, no, the ending was very undramatic.

• 4:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  We just started doing other things. Gordon wanted to be a solo act anyway. And so there would, no, there was no official breakup moment.

• 4:42Billy Corgan?

  Right. You produced the guy from the Manfred Man.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Paul Jones.

• 4:49Billy Corgan?

  Paul Jones, right. Did that come before joining Apple as A&R, like?

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Yes, before.

• 4:55Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Was that just something as a lark to do with a friend type of thing?

• 4:58Speaker 02

  No, no, what was interesting was, you know, I, because people often ask how I became a record producer and how I became a manager, and they're terribly different because being a record producer was an actual, concrete ambition of mine. I wanted to do that.

• 5:12Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I didn't know that, yeah.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Because I'd very much enjoyed the process of making records with Peter and Gordon. And gradually had gotten more and more involved in the actual production and decision-making.

• 5:24Billy Corgan?

  Who'd you work with? Who, who produced you guys? That's something I feel I should know, but I don't know.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  The first, the first track, the initial big hit, Well Without Love, was produced by a man called Norman Newell, who was best known as sort of middle-of-the-road kind of productions. He produced the UK hit of Andy Williams. God, I'm losing my memory.

• 5:50Billy Corgan?

  Can't, can't help but loving you.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  No. Moon River.

• 5:55Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Because oddly enough, it was a person called Danny Williams who had the hit in England, not Andy Williams. But Norman produced that, and that was his first number one, I think. And he, they, he was recommended by EMI. I mean, not recommended, he was, we were told by EMI that he was going to be the producer of our first record.

• 6:17Billy Corgan?

  What was it about production that appealed to you so, so early on? That's, as you know, most artists really don't care.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:25Billy Corgan?

  They kind of care how it turns out, but they don't want to spend time measuring microphones and all.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  No, that's true. That's true. But once I discovered what a record producer could do, you know, that you could hire musicians vastly better than yourself and tell them what to play, I thought that was brilliant, you know? My reaction was kind of, how do I get in on that racket, you know? And, and I loved the idea of you could try out, you know, different arrangement ideas.

• 6:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Make suggestions and things that worked and things that didn't work.

• 6:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Were you, were you a Manfred Man fan?

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Yes, I was.

• 6:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  And a Paul Jones fan in particular.

• 6:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Paul is, was and is one of the best harmonic players in the world.

• 7:02Billy Corgan?

  Very underrated band, I find. That's a band I, maybe because, you know, in America, they were known as the band that, when they were younger, obviously, they were known as the, that had the hit with Quinn the Eskimo.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:13Billy Corgan?

  So in America, the perception of Manfred Man was almost kind of somewhat novelty-ish.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Well, it began, of course, with Do, Ah, Diddy.

• 7:21Billy Corgan?

  But, but that's my point is, the songs we heard on the radio in America were, the band didn't seem serious to us.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 7:28Billy Corgan?

  But they were a serious band.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  Manfred was a serious musician and the various singers they've had, Mike Dabo and then originally Paul Jones.

• 7:35Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Were very good.

• 7:37Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  So they all took it seriously.

• 7:40Billy Corgan?

  So you've got, you've got one foot in production, you don't know you've broken up your band or your duo.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Exactly. We know we're on, we're on a hiatus.

• 7:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. And then you get the call from Apple, you know, do you want to come A&R?

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:53Billy Corgan?

  Can you walk me through that a little bit?

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Yes, Paul was aware of my ambitions as a record producer. And so the initial conversation with Paul, who I'd become friends with because he was staying in our house, and that's a long story.

• 8:06Billy Corgan?

  As you do.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  As you do.

• 8:07Billy Corgan?

  You have a beetle living in the attic.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  And he asked me if I would produce some records for Apple. And then subsequently adjusted that or made it a bigger offer in the sense that he said, do you want to be head of A&R? I think they'd sort of figured that the label should have somebody called head of A&R because labels have, you know, something, record labels always had. So I was very happy to take that role. And of course, you know, being offered a job by The Beatles was exciting anyway.

• 8:37Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  And.

• 8:38Billy Corgan?

  Was there like a meeting where you'd go sit in the boardroom with them or was there?

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes, there were such meetings. I would try to have weekly A&R meetings with whatever we'd been sent, you know? But, which we were sent vast amounts of stuff.

• 8:52Billy Corgan?

  I can't imagine, everybody in the world probably wanted to be on Apple at that moment.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Yes, I think so. And not only that, but we actively solicited submissions.

• 9:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  We took an ad in the paper.

• 9:02Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Saying, send us your tapes. We will listen to them. And I had to have a staff of about six people to listen.

• 9:09Billy Corgan?

  Was there any great discovery that ever came in that way?

• 9:12Speaker 02

  No, there was, it was disappointing. The submissions were not terribly good. George liked a guy who's called Brute Force, who sent us, who sent us a tape called The King of Fur, which was a song, which was, I'm the king of fur, I'm the, which at the time was hilariously outrageous and got banned and everything, of course.

• 9:38Billy Corgan?

  Did that come out?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  That came out.

• 9:39Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Brute Force was his name.

• 9:41Billy Corgan?

  Because I have some of the other, like, it's Jackie, Lucky Lomax. That's, that's a good, that's a good record.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Yes, you see, that didn't come in the submissions. Jackie was a friend of George's.

• 9:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, but I'm saying is, there's, you know, obviously, what happened with The Beatles kind of overshadowed what happens with Apple as a, as a label. But there's, there were some credible stuff that came out of Apple.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Yes, I mean, Jackie Lomax and of course, James and.

• 10:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  And Mary Hopkin.

• 10:09Billy Corgan?

  Mary Hopkin, yeah.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  You know, which was entirely Paul's invention. It was an example of Paul's extraordinary, the way his brain works is that, you know, Mary Hopkin, I don't know if you know that story of how we signed Mary Hopkin?

• 10:20Billy Corgan?

  I know it a little bit, but I'm happy to hear it.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  She was on a talent show called Opportunity Knox, a bit like, you know, American Idol or whatever. And she got voted on and survived week after week and became the sort of winner. And, and Paul, Twiggy, actually, our friend Twiggy, the supermodel at the time, when there were really only one supermodel, and was only one supermodel, and it was her. And she called Paul to tell him that you should turn on the television to watch this girl. Paul called me. We all watched her. We loved her. And we just, Eric, I think Derek Taylor and I and somebody else were dispatched to Wales

• 11:04Speaker 02

  to sign Mary where she lived. And we had to convince her father, I think, we weren't in the white slave trade, that we were respectable. And so we signed Mary. And at that time, Paul already knew the song he was gonna do with her.

• 11:17Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  He'd heard the song, Those Were the Days, he'd heard by an American duo sung in a nightclub called The Blue Angel some months previously.

• 11:26Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  And made a mental note of it as a terrific song. And he said, I want to do that song with Mary. Let's find the song.

• 11:33Billy Corgan?

  Classic.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  And that was all his idea.

• 11:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  And then he had an arrangement done by this guy, Richard Hewson, who I recommended to do the James Taylor album.

• 11:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Who is a friend of mine, who was a jazz musician.

• 11:45Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  And classical conductor. And so he wrote the arrangement for Those Were the Days, and Paul produced the record.

• 11:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  And it was a huge hit.

• 11:53Billy Corgan?

  Huge hit. James Taylor kind of found you through somebody that knew you kind of thing?

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Kooch. Danny Korchmar.

• 12:02Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Or Kooch, as we called him at the time.

• 12:04Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  And still do. I was in a band, well, when Gordon and I toured America, we were given a backup band, often a different band in different territories.

• 12:17Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Somebody would book you in the northeast.

• 12:19Billy Corgan?

  Was he in one of your backup bands?

• 12:20Speaker 02

  He was in one of our backup bands.

• 12:21Billy Corgan?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Called The King bees. And The King bees were good. Kooch was great. He was a big Steve Cropper fan. I loved his guitar playing. And he and I became great friends. And that friendship extended beyond the Peter and Gordon era.

• 12:36Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  We stayed in touch. So Kooch was subsequently in a band called The Flying Machine in New York with his childhood friend, James Taylor.

• 12:46Billy Corgan?

  Smile, a little smile for me.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  They, exactly. They were friends, going all the way back to Martha's Vineyard when they were 13, 14.

• 12:55Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  So when The Flying Machine broke up, that's The Flying Machine in pieces on the ground, as in the song.

• 13:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Kooch said to James, well, if you're going to London, James intended to go to London because he had a girlfriend over there he thought he could stay with. Don't know that he couldn't. That was another story. But so Kooch gave him my phone number and said, is my friend in England? He's okay. We are friends. Give him a call. So James called me out of the blue.

• 13:25Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  He used himself as Kooch's friend, came over to my flat the following evening and played me a couple of songs. And life changed forever.

• 13:35Billy Corgan?

  Wow. Did you, I love those moments in history because like, okay, you're sitting there. Now, of course, we all know who James Taylor is, such an incredible artist. But did you, did you think, oh, my God, this guy's a world-class talent?

• 13:48Speaker 02

  I did. I did. I was entirely convinced, quite straight away.

• 13:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  I mean, he had a tape. He'd gone in the studio and for like 20 minutes of studio time or something, and recorded two or three songs.

• 14:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  But something in the way she moves and something's wrong were among them. And I kind of went, this guy is completely amazing. Because what's extraordinary is that I loved each separate element of him, you know, because his guitar playing was extremely unusual.

• 14:18Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  You know, he had clearly been listening, listening to Segovia and Julian Bream as much as he'd been listening to Woody Guthrie.

• 14:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  You know, and he combined the folk thing with immaculate and complicated guitar playing. And then his harmonic sense was like owed a lot to The Manhattans and great American vocal bands and stuff.

• 14:40Billy Corgan?

  But also, he had no, like, Dylan damage, where a lot of people around that time were so affected by the shadow of Dylan.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Right. And by Woody Guthrie secondhand.

• 14:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  It took me a while to like Bob Dylan because I thought, who is this guy who wants to sound like Woody Guthrie? Because I was a big Woody Guthrie fan.

• 14:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  And I first saw Dylan in that light. And later, it dawned on me that songs he was writing were of a different caliber.

• 15:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  But his singing put me off for a while.

• 15:08Billy Corgan?

  So walk me through, you bring James Taylor into Apple and say, okay, I think we should put an album by this guy, which you guys did.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:17Billy Corgan?

  What was their first impression of him as an artist?

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Well, I played, first I had James play them a couple of songs live. I went into

• 15:25Billy Corgan?

  Not too intimidating.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Exactly. It didn't really occur to me at the time how scary that would have been.

• 15:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it's like, hey, here's The Beatles, now play them some of your songs.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Exactly. He has two Beatles.

• 15:35Billy Corgan?

  Oh, two Beatles. Two Beatles would still be pretty intimidating.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Is a quorum.

• 15:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:42Billy Corgan?

  So who was present?

• 15:43Speaker 02

  George and Paul.

• 15:44Billy Corgan?

  Okay, good.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  And James played them a couple of songs. And they kind of went, yeah, sign him, you know?

• 15:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Produce him. And I did. And we went in the studio shortly thereafter. We put a little band together, advertised in The Melody Maker for musicians, and chose a keyboard player and a bass player, Don Shin and Louis Sonamo. I haven't seen them for 100,000 years. And James's friend, Joel O'Brien, who is a New York drummer, who's one of James's best friends, who we knew we wanted to use. And we embarked on the production of the first James Taylor album.

• 16:27Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  At Trident Studios.

• 16:29Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so it's because it has something to do with the story. I'm not asking for the salacious part, but he had a drug habit or was kind of back and forth. Were you aware of the drug habit? Because that kind of feeds into the story of how it all kind of goes wrong there for a minute.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, not really aware. No, I knew very little about drug addiction. And, you know, it just sort of dawned on me. There was something was amiss. I just thought he was extremely moody and, you know, and late and stuff. But eventually, I realized these were all the symptoms of a major disease.

• 17:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So because the album doesn't necessarily connect with, you know, didn't sell per se, right?

• 17:12Speaker 02

  No.

• 17:12Billy Corgan?

  He's not, he's not a sensation.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  No.

• 17:14Billy Corgan?

  He ends up going back to America. And somehow that leads you to America.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  He got some respectful reviews and stuff, and then decided to go back to America.

• 17:22Billy Corgan?

  Right. So how do you end up going?

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Because we discussed, you know, who we thought should manage him and how his career should take place. It was clear to me that his career should be American-based. He wanted to go back anyway.

• 17:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  And the people we admired, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and so on.

• 17:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Were all based in the US, even though the Canadian in some cases. And so, you know, we agreed that I would go to New York as his manager.

• 17:58Billy Corgan?

  Oh, wow.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  I kind of thinking, how hard can it be, you know? And the answer is, if you've got James Taylor, it's not that hard.

• 18:06Billy Corgan?

  So funny, sorry. Because, you know, for a short time, Elliot Roberts managed me.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 18:12Billy Corgan?

  And Elliot used to, you know, as you know, because you knew Elliot, he'd make these massive proclamations, you know? And I go, yeah, if you've got Neil Young, you know, it kind of works.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 18:22Billy Corgan?

  You know?

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Exactly. I mean, I got to indict the first two managers into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which were Brian Epstein and Andrew Lou Goldham.

• 18:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  The Beatles and The Stones. So it's like, duh, you know, how hard can that be? So the secret of great management is a great client.

• 18:40Billy Corgan?

  Had you, had you guys developed a personal friendship as well?

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, we liked each other. We still do, fortunately. And talked to James the other day. And he's, you know, happily on the road, sounding as wonderful as ever.

• 18:55Billy Corgan?

  I guess I ask because my stepmother was a huge fan of James. So I grew up hearing James's music in the house, and I became a fan. And over time, then, I certainly grew to appreciate what a great artist he is. And I even like, like, 80s James Taylor, where like, maybe the 70s fans didn't necessarily like that. I sort of thought he made a cool pivot. I thought he was one of those guys who somehow gracefully went into the 80s.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:21Billy Corgan?

  And I don't know how much you had to do with that per se.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Which albums are we thinking about?

• 19:26Billy Corgan?

  It was when there was, when there were hits there, you know, sort of late 70s, early 80s, there were sort of like, he kind of, I was like, I don't want to say he sounded like Jimmy Buffett, but like, everybody started kind of making those types of records.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Kind of, yeah, a little bit, yes.

• 19:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:39Billy Corgan?

  You know, kind of, I don't know, it felt like endless sunrises or something, sunsets.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  Yes, some of those songs were more depressing than that. But yes.

• 19:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. But I'm saying, somehow he maintained who he was through that transition, where some people felt it got a little schmaltzy.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Yes, they did.

• 19:57Billy Corgan?

  Right. We don't have to say who they are, but we know who they are. Anyway, I got lost in my reverie for James. I guess what I'm saying is, because you know the man, and I am interested in him as an artist, the fact that he was this moody and unfortunately drug-addicted artist when he was young, and that became part of his story. But he went on to have, obviously, a long and successful and very respectable career.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Well, of course, and the key point is, he's been sober now for decades.

• 20:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  And all that is.

• 20:33Billy Corgan?

  What I'm saying is, I feel like for somebody that I've listened to for over 40 years of my life, I don't really know him as a person. Is that this because he's a private person or?

• 20:44Speaker 02

  He's quite private. He's very funny. I mean, he's always funnier than people expect.

• 20:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  But, and extremely smart, obviously.

• 20:54Billy Corgan?

  Well, yeah, definitely smart.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I consider myself fortunate to count him as a very close friend.

• 21:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  And, and still a great musician.

• 21:07Billy Corgan?

  He does.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  And still out there working and sounding great.

• 21:09Billy Corgan?

  He does cool stuff on YouTube where he shows like kind of how he plays. I, I'm like studying, like he's like my teacher, like, how do you do some of that stuff?

• 21:16Speaker 02

  I know, well, it's.

• 21:18Billy Corgan?

  Incredible.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Sort of some folk technique, you know, pulling off and hammering on stuff.

• 21:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  But, but applied to really jazzy chords.

• 21:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  So cool.

• 21:27Billy Corgan?

  So, um, speaking of the seventies, so you know, you guys end up in LA, Sunset Sound. And I'm looking at this, you know, which becomes the big record, but, uh, in, you know, with massive hits. But the, what I see when I look at that, and I was just at Sunset Sound not long ago, recording myself. It's basically the birth of yacht rock or seventies rock or whatever, like.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I haven't quite got a handle on yacht rock yet.

• 21:54Billy Corgan?

  It's, it's, it's meant to be respectful, uh, but it, it's, it's, it's a, it's a particular form of recording. It's, it's very dry. It's very, you know, very present.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 22:05Billy Corgan?

  A lot of natural, beautiful tone.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 22:07Billy Corgan?

  But you're there kind of basically first. And when I looked at who was playing on the thing, you know, it's like Kunkel, Randy Meisner, Carole King's in the session.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, Carole King was James's piano player for a while.

• 22:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. And Mas Kunkel, that was the first session he ever did.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  He'd never, he'd never recorded it.

• 22:27Billy Corgan?

  So I'm saying you, you're basically putting together, let's, let's call it the new form of the LA Wrecking Crew.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  Yes, in a way.

• 22:33Billy Corgan?

  And there they are, and it's on that album.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 22:36Billy Corgan?

  And that sort of sets the template for about the next seven or eight years of music making.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  And also I was surprised, I, when I, when I credited the musicians, which, which was my determination to do. It turned out that was unusual as well.

• 22:48Billy Corgan?

  Really?

• 22:48Speaker 02

  There was a time before, before that, they didn't get their names on records.

• 22:53Billy Corgan?

  Did you have a particular sonic vision that you were after, or was it what you were just attracted to?

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Clarity, I think.

• 22:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  I really, if anything, you know, which later on I was accused of being too neat and neat and tidy. But, um, I, I, I really liked records where each sound and each part.

• 23:12Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Fit into a, an overall picture.

• 23:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  You know, and you didn't have to listen carefully.

• 23:18Billy Corgan?

  Was, was there something that had influenced you to, like, did you listen to somebody else and thought, oh, I'd like that?

• 23:24Speaker 02

  It's a very good question. Uh, I don't know. I think there's some R and B records that you, that feel like that to me, where each part, even the horn parts.

• 23:35Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Have a very precise role.

• 23:36Billy Corgan?

  Like stacks type stuff?

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 23:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:39Billy Corgan?

  That beautiful kind of, it's all there. You're in the room, maybe?

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, Steve Crawford will play one note.

• 23:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Make it mean a lot.

• 23:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, beautiful.

• 23:50Billy Corgan?

  I, I thought, uh,

• 23:54Billy Corgan?

  as, as, as I do sometimes, I find myself trying to put myself in your shoes at that moment. Now you're a successful record producer. You've had a very successful pop career.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:04Billy Corgan?

  Right? That's not a dirty word.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  No.

• 24:07Billy Corgan?

  But, but, but suddenly now you're a producer. Were you, were you okay with now being the guy behind the scenes?

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:13Billy Corgan?

  Did you like that part of it?

• 24:14Speaker 02

  I liked, I liked that very much.

• 24:16Billy Corgan?

  Did you like that you didn't have to go and perform? Like, what part of it was appealing to you?

• 24:20Speaker 02

  I think, I, yeah, I did. I enjoyed not having to perform. Um, I had, I didn't do it for a long time. But at the same time, there was, there was part about being on stage I always liked, of course, because especially that era that we were on stage, when it was all about screaming girls and stuff.

• 24:36Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  That was a lot of.

• 24:37Billy Corgan?

  You guys had the best era of them all.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  We did. We, we enjoyed ourselves. And, uh, so I, I knew the idea of returning to the, to, to, to live singing appealed to me as well. And I, I did sing on a lot of the records I made.

• 24:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  And a lot of backup vocals that, that I went, well, I'll do that.

• 24:53Billy Corgan?

  But I'm saying is most, most people would have a hard time sublimating their ego. If they've had success as a performer.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Yes, I suppose so.

• 25:02Billy Corgan?

  It's, it's not common, as you know.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  But yeah, my, my, I have a healthy ego, I think. I mean.

• 25:08Billy Corgan?

  You do, yeah. And I don't think that's a bad thing.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  When I was.

• 25:11Billy Corgan?

  Talented person.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  I was happy to be known, even when I wasn't on stage, you know, when.

• 25:17Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  When Rolling Stone put me on the cover, I went, yes, please.

• 25:20Billy Corgan?

  But you understand, it's like, it's not, not often that somebody will take themselves out of the spotlight and make it about somebody else.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  That's true. I suppose, yeah. But I, I would, that's what I was determined to do.

• 25:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, because I had a moment in, uh, when I was in my early thirties, I was out of a record deal. And a, a friend of mine from a record label called me and he said, what are you going to do? And I said, well, I'm trying to get a new record deal. And he said, I think you should go into production. He said, you'd be a perfect person for it. You know, you know what you're doing. You know how to write.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:53Billy Corgan?

  And he said, think about it. You won't have to tour anymore. You can have a normal schedule. You'll make the same amount of money that you're making now. And I thought, I said, I thought, I said, you're crazy. I'm not, I'm not done.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  I'm a star.

• 26:06Billy Corgan?

  I'm a star, baby. I mean, I, I got more to, but I, it would, it would have been, and you were at, I think in this point, you were maybe 25, 26 years old, somewhere around there?

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. See, the thing is, I think part of it is that I was always the harmony singer. I mean, I wasn't the star. I mean, collectively, I suppose as a duo, we were.

• 26:24Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  We were stars, but I still think it's not irrelevant to consider that, you know, I.

• 26:29Billy Corgan?

  But your name was, but your name was first on the marquee.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Oddly enough, that, that was a, that was a change. We were Gordon and Peter.

• 26:36Billy Corgan?

  Really?

• 26:37Speaker 02

  Gordon and I got together at school. We were Gordon and Peter.

• 26:40Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  Because he was the lead singer.

• 26:42Billy Corgan?

  He was the lead singer.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  He was the tall, handsome one, but it was the obvious solution. It was when we had a record deal, EMI came to us one day and said, we, we've done some research. Peter and Gordon is sounds better. Uh, we're, we're changing it to Peter and Gordon. And who was I to complain? So.

• 26:56Billy Corgan?

  I was gonna say, you're like.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, think of me as, as, as second feeling.

• 27:02Billy Corgan?

  So now that you're, okay, because it's, as you, as we all know now, you know, this is a romantic time in music history. LA.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:12Billy Corgan?

  Laurel Canyon, you got this whole crowd out here. Neil Young's out here. Joni Mitchell, you know, you talked about these people before. You have the Beach Boys are sort of finding their, their seventies way. It's a fecund period in, in LA.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 27:26Billy Corgan?

  Music history, a lot of great musicians, a lot of great singer songwriters. And you're in your mid twenties, you're living the California dream.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 27:34Billy Corgan?

  As you know, it's perpetually sunny out here.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 27:37Billy Corgan?

  Coming out of gloomy old England. Um, did you, I, I guess what I'm saying, and you take it however you want, like, is it what you wanted? Like, did you, you're like, you're like, you, did you look around and go, ah, this is all right?

• 27:48Speaker 02

  This is all right. Yes, I think so. Because I visited LA before, of course.

• 27:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  On the road with Gordon.

• 27:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  And I remember distinctly, I mean, uh, there was, there was a point where a year earlier, I'd been bicycling home from university in the, in the, in the winter, on a winter's afternoon, bicycling in the rain, you know? And, and, and almost exactly a year later, I was driving down Sunset Boulevard in a rented Mustang convertible, being recognized by beautiful women. I kind of went, this is a little bit better. This is an improvement.

• 28:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So, uh, sticking with the production side of the.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  So I knew I'd lucked out.

• 28:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah. So, uh, and so Linda Ronstadt had, had success with Stone Ponies.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:32Billy Corgan?

  And hits. And, um, I think when you, you came in, because there was something with an album that was, you, you came in where an album was struggling.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Half done, yeah.

• 28:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Can you, can you walk me through that a little bit?

• 28:43Speaker 02

  It was partly produced by John Boylan, partly by John David Souda. Both of them were boyfriends at the time and it was, it was complicated.

• 28:51Billy Corgan?

  Sounds messy.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  And it, it, it couldn't get finished somehow. So I helped her finish it.

• 28:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  And in the course of all that, I think it was John that suggested that maybe I would be interested in managing her as well.

• 29:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Cause John Boylan, it didn't make sense. And, um, and John played a key role in that. And, and so, uh, initially, when Linda approached me about management, I, first of all, I, I asked James, because at that, that point, I was, I was a one client manager.

• 29:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  This represented a potential change. And, but he was okay with it, after thinking about it. I mean, it wasn't an instant decision.

• 29:32Billy Corgan?

  I'd have to think about it too.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, um, where was I?

• 29:38Billy Corgan?

  Well, you, how you, you, you worked with her on her album.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  Exactly. So that, that impelled her. And at the same time also, I'd started managing James's sister Kate.

• 29:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  And I thought, well, that would be weird to be trying to break two girls saying, is it the same thing? So I wasn't sure that I could say, say yes to Linda and, and be effective. So I said, no, initially. And then Kate decided that show business was not for her. And she, we, she made one album for Atlantic, which is a very good album, I think. But, but, but she, the road didn't agree with her.

• 30:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Cause in doing the research on you, I didn't even know that James had a sister that had recorded.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:16Billy Corgan?

  I was sort of like, huh? Like, in all these years of like digging around in record piles, I wasn't aware that there was the sister that sang.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, they all sing. They're all, all the brothers.

• 30:26Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  And, and, and the sister.

• 30:28Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  So Kate, Alex, Livingston Hughes.

• 30:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  Or the whole Taylor family sings.

• 30:33Billy Corgan?

  So tell me if this perception is right, because, you know, I was too young, but I kind of remember the times. But there was, there's a, seems to be a historical sense that after Stone Ponies, she was just another girl singer from a band that had kind of broken up. And she was kind of, she had a deal, but nobody really thought she had a big upside. Is that, is that generally inaccurate?

• 30:54Speaker 02

  I think that's accurate. And also I think she had a slight reputation for being difficult. With, with not totally unjustified, um, because she was, was and is incredibly smart and, and has incredibly good ideas of her own.

• 31:11Billy Corgan?

  You think it was just a headstrong type of thing?

• 31:13Speaker 02

  I think it was a, you know, the people were telling her, don't you worry, you're pretty little head about that.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  And, and, and thinking that they could tell her what to do.

• 31:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Uh, I think people honestly did have a hard time realizing that somebody who had that voice, miraculous voice.

• 31:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  And was incredibly good looking and, and could also be a seriously thoughtful, well-read, intelligent person.

• 31:36Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Um, and, and they had a hard time understanding all that. And it became clear to me that all you had to do with Linda was listen.

• 31:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  And then help her affect her.

• 31:47Billy Corgan?

  Before you, before you worked with her, what was your perception of her voice?

• 31:52Speaker 02

  I saw her first at the bitter end in New York, Paul Colby's bitter end and was blown away, completely blown away. This is when she had the backup band that turned into the Eagles.

• 32:03Billy Corgan?

  Ah, that's right.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Randy Meisner, Don Henley, Glenn Frey.

• 32:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  Good band.

• 32:10Billy Corgan?

  Not bad. Not bad.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Forecast a bright future for them.

• 32:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  So, so, and, and she was amazing. I mean, I'd never had anything like it in my life. She had this extraordinary voice, you know.

• 32:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it's a kind of a one of a kind voice.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Totally is.

• 32:31Billy Corgan?

  And could, and total.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Pitch, pitch, control, command. Yeah, that's, that's what tragically, when she figured out she had Parkinson's.

• 32:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  That's what she lost was the, the control. Because sometime before she even realized that she, there was an illness involved. She was kind of going, my voice won't do what it feels like it should. And I couldn't hear the difference, but she could feel the difference.

• 32:55Billy Corgan?

  Ah, I bet.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  It was, it was the control.

• 32:56Billy Corgan?

  Well, when you're, when you're like a gifted.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Her pitch is insane, you know.

• 33:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  A lot of those vocals on those albums are live vocals.

• 33:04Billy Corgan?

  I bet.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  You know, and obviously not.

• 33:06Billy Corgan?

  Some singers, they just open their mouth and it just sounds right.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly.

• 33:10Billy Corgan?

  You were instrumental in helping the public find her gift as a solo artist. And we know that that translation doesn't always work, you know, that the idea that you, you're a standalone singer.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:23Billy Corgan?

  You know, not everybody makes that translation. I've even had, I've even struggled to get the public to understand me out of my band, even though I'm the writer and the singer. So I, I understand that that's a difficult leap for people to make. What was it that you think that you all discovered together? You know, You're No Good, I think, was the first big hit that sort of cracked it open, right?

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Yes, it did, yeah. That was, you know, the big number one record that, that changed people's perception.

• 33:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  And a lot of the credit for the brilliance of that record should go to Andrew Gold as well.

• 33:55Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Who was an extraordinary musician who played all the, played most of the instruments.

• 33:59Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, all, all the guitar stuff in the middle is all him.

• 34:03Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah. Cool.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  He.

• 34:05Billy Corgan?

  Cool stuff.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  He played, Comefree played the drums as well. Kenny Edwards played the bass, but he, Andrew played most of the instruments and had a lot of the ideas. So I worked with Andrew on, on that record.

• 34:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. But what did you, what, I mean, maybe this is too esoteric a question, but what do you think it was that suddenly was there and so obvious to the public that wasn't there for the previous, you know, three, four years?

• 34:32Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, we, we lucked out, we have the right song.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  Linda sang it brilliantly, but it was just, it was one of those cases where you, you work a couple of days on a record in the studio and you kind of go, if this isn't a hit, I don't know what is.

• 34:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Everyone who, everyone you play to likes it.

• 34:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Except Linda, who initially didn't like the guitar stuff in the middle.

• 34:56Billy Corgan?

  Oh, the weird.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  All the, all the multiple guitar parts.

• 34:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  She went, oh, it sounds like the Beatles. I don't, I don't know. And I went, yeah, it does sound a bit like the Beatles, but that's why it's so cool, you know.

• 35:07Billy Corgan?

  That's where you go, well, I know the Beatles and let me tell you.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  She changed her mind.

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• 40:37Billy Corgan?

  You've worked with so many great artists and, you know, we could literally just talk for hours about you as a producer. Anyway, just here's a short list of people I thought was interesting you work with, and you worked with more people than this, but Diana Ross, Tony Joe White, who I love, Cher, Ringo, Livy Newton-John, Barbra Streisand.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:58Billy Corgan?

  And I thought, wow, you've worked with a lot of incredible singers.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:01Billy Corgan?

  And even with your relationship with the Beatles, you're like, you've been around great singers. And I thought you would be one of the only people that could answer a question like this, which is, is there a common link between such one of a kind singers?

• 41:15Speaker 02

  Well, it is that one of a kindness that is, is the link, I think. I mean, I, I find myself particularly drawn to singers who are instantly identifiable, among whom I number you.

• 41:27Billy Corgan?

  Thank you. That's a perfect.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  Because I mean, your voice is another one where you're going to go, I know who that is.

• 41:33Billy Corgan?

  Sometimes that's a good thing.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  No one else could do that, you know?

• 41:35Billy Corgan?

  You know, when I was young, though, I thought it was a bad thing because everyone was always telling me my voice was wrong.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Right. Well, distinctive can be wrong, can be right.

• 41:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it took, I had to find my own song, which was my, my journey. But, but I appreciate that because when you, when you, like everybody I name, even Ringo, I mean, there's only one person who seems like Ringo.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  You only need a bar to know who it is.

• 41:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  And that's, that's certainly true. Cause I mean, the people that always made me nervous when, when they come up to me and start talking about, you know, will you produce a record with me? Or is the I can do anything people, you know? Look, I can sing, like, maybe I should do a bit of country, maybe, but what do you think? You know, whereas most of the people I've had the privilege of working with, Natalie Merchant, you know, everyone, you know?

• 42:19Billy Corgan?

  Natalie, cool singer.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Exactly. You're just going to go, oh, that's great singing. You know, it's inimitable. And, and, and you, and as I say, instantly recognizing.

• 42:29Billy Corgan?

  Even somebody like Natalie, who I got to meet one time,

• 42:35Billy Corgan?

  through your work with her, you know, it's like I had to imagine this whole world around her voice. And I met her, I realized I created this whole personality that wasn't her personality. She's a lovely person, but I'm saying I almost created a personality for that wasn't hers, basically on the sound of her voice.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Right. Right. Her voice is, it's hard to say what's so special about a case like her because you just know it's a particular tonality. It's not even just the phrasing, it's the tone.

• 43:04Billy Corgan?

  So looking back on your production career,

• 43:09Billy Corgan?

  what do you most, I don't know, most proud of isn't the, wait, wait, wait.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, it's been, it's been so miraculously surprising to me. I mean, I remember the first time I worked with Diana Ross, for example, you know, I remember being in the studio and, and she, she went out there to sing on the first song we were doing. And, you know, I'm somebody who had, had every Supreme's record in the book, you know, and knew them all by heart. So she opens about and I find myself going, but Jesus Christ, she sounds exactly like Diana Ross. That's too weird.

• 43:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  The same with Cher, you know, Cher's big foghorn of a voice, which is so exciting, you know? And, and I'm considering myself incredibly lucky. And then again, last year with Barbara, with whom I'd never worked before, and I knew her socially a bit. But I mean, again, the miraculous moment they first step up to the mic and you go, it's Barbara.

• 44:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  It's, it's very amazing. And then I'm very lucky to have experienced all that.

• 44:14Billy Corgan?

  So let's go back a little bit to the beginning. I probably have this wrong, but I'm, I'm paraphrasing here. Your dad worked in the medical field with blood and mental health issues. Is that, is that?

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Not particularly blood.

• 44:28Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  He was an endocrinologist, which is glands and,

• 44:31Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  And he was also very interested in mental health and was in charge of the mental observation ward of the hospital, though he was not actually qualified psychiatrically.

• 44:41Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  But he just had a real knack with,

• 44:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  With, with dealing with people with mental illnesses.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  He, he, even those extremely, extremely crazy people.

• 44:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  We were in, he would go in the room and lie on the floor, you know, because he found he never got attacked if he lied on the floor, however crazy they were.

• 45:03Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  So, and he, in, in some, some of what he talked about,

• 45:11Speaker 02

  you know, where it's all evidence based and, and, you know, what do they call it now? The, when you just, it's just talking therapy mostly.

• 45:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, they call it talk therapy.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, that kind of thing.

• 45:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  Which he did. He used hypnosis as well too, before its time.

• 45:27Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  And he's also known, if you look him up now, it's largely because he was the person who identified and named Munchausen syndrome.

• 45:35Billy Corgan?

  Oh, wow. That's kind of a cool.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, you know, also it's, it's also an example of his eccentricity because doctors normally, if they identify a particular syndrome, name it after themselves.

• 45:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  So you still get people that go, who is Dr. Munchausen?

• 45:51Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Because there is no Dr. Munchausen. It was Baron Munchausen, who's the legendary fictional character.

• 45:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  Terry Gilliam made a movie about him.

• 45:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  There was Baron Munchausen. So my father, that.

• 46:02Billy Corgan?

  There's a little bit of wink and a humor in there.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 46:04Billy Corgan?

  And then your mom was a professor.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 46:07Billy Corgan?

  At a music school. George Martin was a pupil.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Correct. Yes.

• 46:11Billy Corgan?

  So.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  By coincidence, before, before we met any Beatles.

• 46:15Billy Corgan?

  And here we are talking on Mother's Day, but.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 46:19Billy Corgan?

  I guess what I'm saying is, you know, not everybody grows up in, in such a learned environment.

• 46:24Speaker 02

  No, I was lucky in that regard too.

• 46:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. And then you've got two sisters that, one was doing voice acting. Is that accurate?

• 46:32Speaker 02

  Claire, Claire did, Claire was the cleverest of us all, probably. She, she's the one who actually went to Oxford and got an organ scholarship to Oxford and, and is the most, the most skilled musician out of, out of the three of us. But, and Jane became a successful actress.

• 46:51Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. And then you started acting when you were young.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, when I was eight.

• 46:56Billy Corgan?

  Was that something you wanted to do?

• 46:59Speaker 02

  I don't know. Well, what happened was we were spotted by an agent who, who liked the look of us and told our mother that she thought she could get work for us and would we be interested?

• 47:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  And I think it was largely based on the fact that we all three had red hair, bright red hair at the time. It's changed in the interim, but, but, so I think that, so that we all got signed up. We never did get anything, all three of us together. But Jane and I did an episode of Robin Hood.

• 47:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I saw that. Yeah.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  As a pair of peasant children.

• 47:30Billy Corgan?

  But I love, cause I saw this story, you had, you acted with John Mills and Alistair Sim.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes.

• 47:37Billy Corgan?

  And even Boris Karloff at some point.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Yes. In fact, I did an interview the other day for, and I was going, this is weird. They would want me. But I think it was a Boris Karloff documentary. And I think I'm the only living actor they could find, who actually worked with Doris, Boris Karloff. Cause when he, after his whole career in America, he moved to England and was in a show, a series called Colonel March of Scotland Yard. And, and I was in one of the episodes.

• 48:07Billy Corgan?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  And Boris Karloff, I had a couple of scenes with Boris.

• 48:11Billy Corgan?

  Do you have a good memory of that?

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Yes, very. He was charming. And he had a scene where somebody was trying to poison me. And he had to, with his walking stick, smash a glass of milk out of my hands so that I didn't drink it. So it was, it was very dramatic.

• 48:25Billy Corgan?

  Is there a video of this? Have you seen?

• 48:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 48:27Billy Corgan?

  I have to find the video of that.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  It's called the talking, the talking head or something, oddly enough.

• 48:33Billy Corgan?

  But I'm a huge Boris Karloff fan, which I couldn't, I couldn't resist.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, he was very nice to me.

• 48:40Billy Corgan?

  Such a, it's like, that's the beauty of America. It's like somehow we find the Boris Karloffs of the world, you know?

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Yes, that's right.

• 48:48Billy Corgan?

  And turn them into kind of like living legends, you know?

• 48:51Speaker 02

  But he lived up to it. He was really a gentleman.

• 48:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 48:56Billy Corgan?

  So you meet Gordon at school and.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 49:00Billy Corgan?

  What, what musically was going on in the atmosphere that made you want to be a, a pop musician?

• 49:08Billy Corgan?

  I know, I know it didn't happen overnight, but I.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it didn't happen overnight, but Gordon and I found out we liked a lot of the same things. I was more of a folky. I was already Woody Guthrie crazy.

• 49:19Billy Corgan?

  Were you a purist type? You know, like, cause there's people who get very pure, purists.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  No, I wasn't. I wasn't.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  But and then we were both fans of Cliff and The Shadows, you know.

• 49:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  In England, as you know, are very important and in America.

• 49:38Billy Corgan?

  It's a shame because it really hasn't translated over here.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  Not at all. I mean, it's very odd, you know, when, when they interview British guitar players, they invariably give credit to Hank B. Marvin.

• 49:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  An American, without doubt, without question, who, you know?

• 49:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  It takes them, oh, The Shadows, that's right.

• 49:56Billy Corgan?

  Even I had to go kind of go back and they're not easy to find in America, like old Shadows records, like mono pressings on EMI or whatever they were on and amazing sound. And I can see the influence when you listen, but in American culture, there's no representation of The Shadows at all.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  No, exactly.

• 50:14Billy Corgan?

  Other than maybe there's like Cherokee or something like one of their.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  Apache.

• 50:17Billy Corgan?

  Thank you.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  Close.

• 50:19Billy Corgan?

  Close.

• 50:22Billy Corgan?

  So it's oft told, so you, you could take it however you like, but you know, in somewhere in your story, Paul McCartney moves into your house.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:29Billy Corgan?

  Dating your sister.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:32Billy Corgan?

  Let me ask this, how does, how does that work where your sister goes to your, your mom and your dad and says, hey, by the way, the, the Beatle wants to move in?

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Well, because my mother actually offered him the guest room because he was hanging around a lot and he would come to dinner, you know, and, and hang out and you see.

• 50:51Billy Corgan?

  This is early, like 63, 64.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  I'm bad at dates, but yes.

• 50:55Billy Corgan?

  But early, like this isn't like they're, they're getting there, but they're not like what they became.

• 51:00Speaker 02

  It's sort of love me do time, I guess, or something like that.

• 51:03Billy Corgan?

  Wow, wow.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Yes. So, yeah, you know, Jane met them when she was in, asked by the Radio Times magazine, the equivalent of TV Guide, I guess, and, and they asked her if she would go and see The Beatles when they came down to London for the first time to play in an NME pole winners concert, where they just did a few songs. They wanted her to go, it was, she was known for her affection for music. She was also known for being on a TV show called Jukebox Jury, where, where various celebrities would rate the hits, hits or hit or miss. So they knew she liked music and they wanted her to write a piece about The Beatles and

• 51:44Speaker 02

  see what all the fuss was about. So she went and she was taken backstage to meet them as the visiting celebrity and, and she met all The Beatles and found them all to be charming and funny and, and she liked them, they liked her, one of them liked her in particular and invited her out. And that's how she ended up going with Paul. And then that meant Paul was around her house a lot.

• 52:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  And we all liked him. So at some point he was there a lot and he stayed in the guest room from time to time. And her mother said, you know, that if you wanted to use the guest room as a pied-à-terre when they were in London.

• 52:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  That was okay. So he was there a lot.

• 52:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  Eventually moved in.

• 52:26Billy Corgan?

  So when he's living.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  About three years, I guess.

• 52:28Billy Corgan?

  How, how, where were you at musically, you know, with, with Gordon?

• 52:33Speaker 02

  We were playing a lot. We had a gig and a regular gig by this time in a place called the Pickwick Club, where we played every night. It was just the two of us acoustic guitar, no P A.

• 52:44Billy Corgan?

  Mostly doing folk, folk.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  Folk, no, we were doing rock classics as well, a lot of Buddy Holly.

• 52:49Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Probably all Buddy Holly, I would say, most of the catalog and, and some folks, a lot of folk stuff too.

• 53:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  It's that mixture.

• 53:01Billy Corgan?

  It's funny, I just interviewed Paul Anka.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  Oh, great.

• 53:04Billy Corgan?

  Who wrote a song for Buddy because Buddy was trying to cross over.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  Guess it doesn't matter anymore. Yes.

• 53:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So, so like weird.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, exactly.

• 53:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Cause Buddy Holly was such a great songwriter. It's like funny that he.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And, and, and Paul Anka captured it perfectly, including the weird, Paul Anka actually put Golly G and Whoops-a-daisy into the lyrics to Guess It Doesn't Matter Anymore, which is something only Buddy Holly would dare to do.

• 53:29Billy Corgan?

  So, uh, one Beatles story, if you don't mind, it's, it's the, it's where they wrote, or you got to hear, I want to hold your hand, or they wrote it in your basement, or.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:38Billy Corgan?

  Just walk me through that story.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. And my mother, when Paul moved in, my mother had a music room in the basement that she occasionally used for giving private Oboe lessons, but she, but didn't use much because she was very busy at her main gig, which was the, being Oboe professor at the Royal Academy of Music. So that room was pretty empty. And she said to Paul, if he ever needed a piano, he could use the piano in that room, which was a small upright piano. And he did quite often. And this particular day, John Lennon came over, who we'd met by this time. And, and they went down to this basement room and after a couple of hours, I guess, called upstairs to see, to see who was around and ask if I wanted to come hear

• 54:22Speaker 02

  the song they had just finished. So I said, yes, came down, I sat on this little sofa, two-person sofa, that they sat side by side on the piano bench and hammered out. Curiously, what was, because it's odd that I Want to Hold Your Hand was written on the piano in some respects.

• 54:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  So much a guitar song, but it was written on the piano and, and they played it to me and asked me what I thought.

• 54:47Billy Corgan?

  And you said.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  I said, it sounds great. It's amazing. And of course, what the ultimate clue is that, is that what she says, that's amazing, could you play it again? And then the second clue is that they were very happy to play it again. So they knew exactly what they'd got.

• 55:04Billy Corgan?

  Wow. Um, one question about John Lennon. Paul McCartney, if you watch interviews in 1963 to today, he seems like a fairly consistent personality. And I'm not saying John Lennon was a chameleon. He, he obviously went through a lot of inner changes. But what were your impressions of him at that point?

• 55:25Speaker 02

  I never got to know John terribly well. I mean, people, you know, I, I obviously spent more time with Paul than with John, but he, he could be quite grumpy. He could be opinionated, but he was also fascinating.

• 55:37Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 55:38Speaker 02

  And, and, and articulate.

• 55:40Billy Corgan?

  Did you, did you see him as a magnetic personality at that point? Can you, can you at least try to quantify that a bit?

• 55:48Billy Corgan?

  Cause every generation has these, it's easy to look back and say, well, now we see what they did. And he did so much great work in his life. But oftentimes, and there's people in my generation where I remember meeting them early on, you, you would hear the rumble about somebody.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 56:05Billy Corgan?

  You know, and you, and you go, okay, I'm going to see for myself what all this rumble is about. And then you see it and you go, well, I don't know what that is, but there's something there.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  Exactly. I think that's, I think that's exactly what it was. And, and, yeah, it became clear that he was an interesting person and a changeable person and a person capable of being quite grumpy. I saw, I've seen him sort of shut people down.

• 56:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  Readily, you know?

• 56:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 56:32Speaker 02

  To the point where it might even seem hurtful, but I've also seen him be very funny.

• 56:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  Lewis Carroll connection was, was one, you know, we were all Lewis Carroll fans.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  My sister Jane.

• 56:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  There's a, there's a, there's a record version of Alice that she did.

• 56:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  Which is interesting, which you'd find fascinating too, because it was one of the first live stereo recordings.

• 56:56Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  That Argos Records ever did. And it was, it was full on live stereo to the point where when they fall into the pool of tears, they shot it all, they filmed, recorded it all at a swimming pool and they had the cast fall into the water as, as Lewis Carroll prescribes.

• 57:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. One, one last thing on them. Even on a song like I Want to Hold Your Hand, you hear the brilliance of their sort of melodic, you know, there's almost like a Bach thing going on with them.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 57:25Billy Corgan?

  Did you recognize that there was a harmonic complexity in them early on?

• 57:29Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes. It was, you know, you couldn't, and all the da, da, da, da, da in the left hand of the piano.

• 57:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  Or the guitar, which we came to the top of. Just, it was a, just brilliantly written song.

• 57:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  Brilliantly arranged.

• 57:43Billy Corgan?

  So, uh, back to Peter and Gordon. Uh, you know, Paul offers you a tape. I think there was three songs on it. Is that, is that accurate?

• 57:55Speaker 02

  What was that love? Yeah. No, no, the one, I, I don't think there were three songs on it.

• 58:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. The story, the story I read, so you were there.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:04Billy Corgan?

  He, there was a tape where it had World Without Love, Nobody I Know, and I Don't Want to See You Again.

• 58:09Speaker 02

  No.

• 58:09Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  They were all written at different times and.

• 58:13Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  And the World Without Love tape was a demo he made in my bedroom upon request.

• 58:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  And it was, he played me the song, which didn't have a bridge, by the way. It was unfinished.

• 58:24Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  And he explained that he didn't finish it because John didn't like it. John thought it was a lame song and John thought the lyric was ridiculous, that please lock me away was an incredibly stupid way to start a song. So, um, it didn't have a bridge at all. And Paul made me a demo. First he showed me the song, wrote out the lyrics and the chords, which I have.

• 58:50Billy Corgan?

  I was gonna, that was my next question.

• 58:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're safely locked in a fireproof safe. And, and, uh, but again, no bridge. But so, and he made the demo, again, just one verse. So we'd have the melody.

• 59:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  And the bridge came in response to me nagging him in terms of the session. Cause Norman Newell had said, you know, we've, he did, Norman Newell had chosen two or three songs from our set that he'd overheard at the big club when he came to see us. But he said, if you know any other new songs, you know, be sure to bring them along. And that's when I went, maybe I do. And so I was said to Paul, that unfinished song you played us, is it, anything happened with that? You know, the Beatles changing their minds and doing it? He said, no. And can we have it? And he said, yes.

• 59:40Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  A simple yes.

• 59:43Billy Corgan?

  So when did he write the bridge? Just kind of knock one out?

• 59:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, he said, um, he went, I, I think it was like a week before the session or something. I said, we really want to do that song. You know, it's really needs a bridge. And so he went into his bedroom and with his guitar and came out a few minutes later with the, so I wait and in a while I will see my true love smile. She may come, I know not when, and so on. And we went, that'll do.

• 1:00:10Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  Thank you very much.

• 1:00:13Billy Corgan?

  So now you're doing a-

• 1:00:14Speaker 02

  Didn't realize how momentous that was.

• 1:00:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, but I mean, that's the beauty of it.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:19Billy Corgan?

  You know, because it changes the course of your musical life.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:00:26Billy Corgan?

  I love looking at discographies because it tells such a beautiful story. If you're able to like, sort of look linearly. So first single, World Without Love.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:35Billy Corgan?

  Second song, a second single Paul also wrote, Nobody I Know.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:00:40Billy Corgan?

  And then the third singles, I Don't Want To See You Again, also a Paul composition. And then the fourth is I Go To Pieces with Del Shannon, which is another incredible writer.

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:00:51Billy Corgan?

  Is, is true that you, he showed you the song or something in one of those cavalcade type gigs?

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  In Australia. We were in Australia and on a, on a bill with Del Shannon, ourselves, The Searchers.

• 1:01:04Billy Corgan?

  Another great band.

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  Eden Kane, an obscure British artist.

• 1:01:07Billy Corgan?

  I know you.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  And some New Zealand girl singer and Dinah Lee. And we were all on the road together. What I discovered later was that he'd actually written the song in America and had tried to find a home for it before leaving for Australia, not successfully. And, but in Australia, he played it to The Searchers. He thought it would be great for The Searchers and to be honest, I think he was right. The Searchers with their jangly electric twelve string sound could have made a killer record of, I Go To-

• 1:01:36Billy Corgan?

  Searchers are basically like power pop 10 years early.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:01:41Billy Corgan?

  If you listen, if you really, I really love The Searchers. And if you really listen, it's like, they sound like Cheap Trick, but they're like Cheap Trick in 65.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  But all, all with the Rick and Backer twelve-

• 1:01:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, cool stuff.

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  Exactly. And The Searchers turned it down. And, and I'd overheard that and said to, to Del, can we have that?

• 1:02:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  And so we worked it out at sound checks and stuff and-

• 1:02:05Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  And said, please don't give it to anybody else. When we get back to London, we will record this. We think it's a hit and it was.

• 1:02:11Billy Corgan?

  That's one of my favorite songs that you guys did.

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  Mine too.

• 1:02:14Billy Corgan?

  Such a cool, cause you, cause something about the mercy beat vibe with Del Shannon.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  I know, I, I, I agree. I, I, on stage, I always tell the story that if, you know, if I'm listening to the 60 station as I drive up and down PCH or something, um, if I Go To Pieces comes on, it's the one I'm most likely to open the window and crank the volume and go, that's me.

• 1:02:35Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  Cause I'm, I'm, I'm proud of that.

• 1:02:38Billy Corgan?

  A beautiful, beautiful recording. Fifth single, True Love Ways by none other than Buddy Hawley. And then the sixth single is To Know You Is To Love You.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:02:48Billy Corgan?

  I mean, good start for a-

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  We, we changed the title because-

• 1:02:51Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, well, these days you wouldn't, but-

• 1:02:53Speaker 02

  Right, right. We wanted to sing to the girls in the audience. We wanted to, and reporting on a third party situation.

• 1:03:02Billy Corgan?

  So now you're in this heady time of success.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:05Billy Corgan?

  You're doing these, you guys were probably doing those package tours, right? I think I wrote down some of the people you played with. It's, it's just-

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, we did, we did one tour with the Shirels.

• 1:03:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, amazing, amazing package tours, like-

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, Tom Jones.

• 1:03:18Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:21Billy Corgan?

  Is this where you'd only get up and play like two, three songs type thing?

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  Brian Highland.

• 1:03:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, wow.

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  Ronnie Dove.

• 1:03:27Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  Who else was there? Mel Carter.

• 1:03:31Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  Do you remember?

• 1:03:32Billy Corgan?

  Oh, uh, uh, Hold Me, Kiss Me, Thrill Me.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:37Billy Corgan?

  Amazing song.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  Fantastic singer too. He was amazing live.

• 1:03:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  And then we toured in, in the UK with people like, um, Gene Pitney, who was huge in England.

• 1:03:47Billy Corgan?

  Did you like his voice?

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  Yes, terrific.

• 1:03:49Billy Corgan?

  Cool.

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  Terrific, always a little bit sharp, but it worked.

• 1:03:53Billy Corgan?

  Says the producer. Well, I'm always sharp too, so. And in fact, I had an argument once with the, with the friend of mine who was, who was producing a vocal session for me. And I would come in and I'd say, I'm too sharp. And he says, no, it sounds good. It sounds like you.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:04:09Billy Corgan?

  And I go, well, no, but I don't, I, it's too sharp for me. So I would go back in, I'd sing it in tune and I came back in and I go to the guy, what do you think? He goes, doesn't sound exciting.

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  Exactly. Well, Del, well, Del, he and Gene Pitney have something in common.

• 1:04:24Billy Corgan?

  Well, me and, me and Gene.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  You and Gene, right?

• 1:04:27Billy Corgan?

  Seventh single, Baby I'm Yours.

• 1:04:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I, I, you know, when we toured America, I'd heard that on the radio all the time and loved the song and realized that it could be a duet. And when it, by the time we got back to England, its opportunity to be a hit had gone. I don't know if they didn't put it out or it didn't work or they didn't promote it.

• 1:04:47Billy Corgan?

  Well, the thing I read is they wouldn't release it in the US because of the-

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  Right, so, but we were recording it as an English single.

• 1:04:53Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  I knew that because it would have been a big hit in America.

• 1:04:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  I didn't think we'd have a hit with the same song.

• 1:04:58Billy Corgan?

  I misunderstood you.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  So we, we, we covered it for, for England and it was a hit in England.

• 1:05:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  Our version, but cause it, Bob, strangely it wasn't. I love that record.

• 1:05:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, so most of your stuff, correct me if I'm wrong, was mostly done at Abbey Road.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:05:15Billy Corgan?

  Can you walk, can you walk me through like a typical session? Cause I love this era of recording.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, so our producer at the time, after Norman Newell was John Burgess, by the way, to follow up on that conversation. He produced our later records and they, he would book the musicians. We, they made the choice of people like Jim Sullivan and-

• 1:05:37Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  Vic Flick.

• 1:05:39Billy Corgan?

  So would you tell them before the session, we're going to, we want to record the song? So is there a demo or how did, how they do chart it, chart it out for the musicians?

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, Jeff Love was the arranger officially and he would write a chord chart.

• 1:05:50Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  And they would do the booking and everything. It was nine pounds a session those studio musicians made.

• 1:05:59Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  For a three hour session.

• 1:06:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, so three hours.

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  Three hours.

• 1:06:03Billy Corgan?

  And you guys are present, are you singing live or?

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:06Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  Yes, we usually sang live.

• 1:06:10Billy Corgan?

  Were you playing acoustics live with, with the band?

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  No, usually not.

• 1:06:14Billy Corgan?

  Cause you probably don't want to bleed into the-

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. And we'd, we'd always sing together on one mic.

• 1:06:19Billy Corgan?

  Like this way, yeah.

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  Figure eight.

• 1:06:20Billy Corgan?

  Like the Neumann, the Neumann-

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  The Neumann figure eight configuration.

• 1:06:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, there's even cool shots of the Beatles, like same thing, like singing it this way.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  Which is, which is cool because you're bouncing yourself.

• 1:06:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, you're probably doing it this way.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  And I still think there's a way, there's something about the fact they're not just singing at the same time, but you're singing into the same physical capsule.

• 1:06:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  You know, so your voices are internally conjoined and that balance is the balance.

• 1:06:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, Roy Thomas Baker, the great, uh, yeah, obviously did a lot of things, Queen.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:06:50Billy Corgan?

  He's, he was a firm believer on putting voices together into the same thing and getting that sound.

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  Into the same capsule, the same microphone.

• 1:07:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, he said that, he thought that was the key to that.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  I think it makes the difference.

• 1:07:04Billy Corgan?

  Whatever that feeling is, yeah.

• 1:07:08Billy Corgan?

  So, uh, you're doing, you're doing as many takes as you need to do to get the record right or?

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  Yes, and then fix the vocal if you had to.

• 1:07:17Billy Corgan?

  Okay, yeah. Interesting, wow.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  Do another take, punch in some stuff.

• 1:07:21Billy Corgan?

  And three sessions, uh, three hours, you're looking for you, one song?

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  No, you, you usually be able to do more than one song.

• 1:07:27Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  Couple and two or three.

• 1:07:29Billy Corgan?

  Wow, okay.

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  I mean, in the day, you know, if you did a double session.

• 1:07:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  You'd get like five songs.

• 1:07:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. And, and who would pick the takes?

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  The producer.

• 1:07:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, did you, were you okay with that or?

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  I think so, as best I can remember. I mean, when you're trying to sing something, you know, I mean, obviously if, if at the, if at the end of the take, it felt particularly good, you'll say so.

• 1:07:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  But I guess the production, the producer was making the final choice.

• 1:07:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, cause sometimes artists of the era talk about how they felt disempowered by the way things would work. You know, that the producer had sort of the-

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  I, I trusted John Burgess. I mean, he was a good producer and, uh,

• 1:08:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  I mean, uh, I think if I seriously disagreed, we'd listen and argue, but-

• 1:08:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  I don't remember any such arguments.

• 1:08:19Billy Corgan?

  Um, back to Paul McCartney here for a second.

• 1:08:24Billy Corgan?

  Well, yeah, Don't Pity Me was the eighth single.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, that wasn't a hit.

• 1:08:27Billy Corgan?

  It was not a hit. I don't know that one. And then, and then the curious choice of you do a really cool Paul McCartney song, Woman, which I love, incredible.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:39Billy Corgan?

  It's really cool.

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  We cut it two different ways, yeah.

• 1:08:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, but this idea where he, you didn't want people to know that it was his song.

• 1:08:46Speaker 02

  He didn't.

• 1:08:47Billy Corgan?

  Okay, he didn't. So tell me that a little bit, yeah.

• 1:08:50Speaker 02

  He, he, he gave us the song and gave us a potential arrangement, which we ended up in a discussion being him and John Burgess about which way to do it, which I'll get to. But he also said that he wanted to try and experiment, which is to put the song out under a pseudonym, because people were saying that anything with the Beatles' name on it or any of their names would automatically be a hit. And he was insulted about that, so, or annoyed by it or something. So he said.

• 1:09:17Billy Corgan?

  There's an embarrassment of riches.

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  Let's put it out under someone else's name. So he invented this character called Bernard Webb. But the whole thing got screwed up. I mean, in America, someone came out as a Smith.

• 1:09:31Billy Corgan?

  Such an odd choice, you know?

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Somebody sent some message saying, oh, don't put Paul's name in it. Put another name. They obviously hadn't got this Bernard Webb story.

• 1:09:40Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  And, and everyone realized that the thing was published by Northern Songs and it was very ineptly organized deception. But it, but he proved his point because it got lots of airplay and jumped into the charts while the deception was still in place.

• 1:09:56Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:09:57Speaker 02

  And then it all fell apart.

• 1:09:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. The first time I, I got to meet you, the first thing I sailed you with as a fan was, I love this record, Hurt in His Loving.

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:10:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I'm sure you don't remember the conversation, but.

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  I don't, but.

• 1:10:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, but, but you kind of did this.

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  Where was it that we first met? Do you remember?

• 1:10:14Billy Corgan?

  I don't, it's somewhere, I feel, here in LA. We just, we crossed paths.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:18Billy Corgan?

  And, and, and the first thing I said to you is, is like, I'm obsessed with the song that you did Hurt in His Loving. And you kind of gave me that look like, oh, you know that one? Because it wasn't a hit, it wasn't a single, but such a cool.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  Thank you. I think Gordon wrote that mostly.

• 1:10:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  I contributed to it, but.

• 1:10:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, you're on the credits.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, I think it was.

• 1:10:37Billy Corgan?

  It's, it's.

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  Pretty much his song.

• 1:10:38Billy Corgan?

  It has that for people that maybe would be interested in listening to the song. It's kind of got that James Bond.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  Yes, a little bit, yes.

• 1:10:45Billy Corgan?

  Vibe. But it's such a cool production.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  Well, brilliant. Um, I could, I'll go and listen to it.

• 1:10:50Billy Corgan?

  What I love about you guys together is you, you, even though at your core, you're kind of a folk do, your production with, sort of goes past that.

• 1:11:00Speaker 02

  It got bigger and bigger and Gordon's voice got more and more.

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:11:07Speaker 02

  More like that.

• 1:11:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, exactly. Um, I, in my poking around, I found a cool version of Billy Fury doing Hurt in His Loving. Have you ever heard that?

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:11:17Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a live bit, the BBC thing.

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:11:20Billy Corgan?

  I found it on YouTube.

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  We were friends with Billy. Gordon particularly was good friends with him, so.

• 1:11:25Billy Corgan?

  And so there is, there is doing Hurt in His Loving.

• 1:11:28Speaker 02

  I had no idea. Fantastic.

• 1:11:29Billy Corgan?

  I felt like I'd found like a, like a little chestnut.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  That's a gem, yes. I have to listen to it.

• 1:11:37Billy Corgan?

  You were probably one of the only people in the world who was invited to a Beatles session. Generally speaking, nobody was really welcomed there, right?

• 1:11:44Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:11:44Billy Corgan?

  I mean, they ran a pretty tight ship.

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  And I, I was only there very rarely.

• 1:11:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  You know, people who say, well, we're there for that one.

• 1:11:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  I was there two or three times, max.

• 1:11:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Um, and I know you've, I mean, you do a show about the Beatles, but you know, I guess if I was going to ask any fanboy question, it would be,

• 1:12:05Billy Corgan?

  could you see the chemistry with them in, working in the studio? Was it, was it apparent? You know what I mean? Did you see, did you see something that was unusual, say, outside of your normal experiences with recording?

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  Not really, no, because I'd never seen bands recording before. So I suppose it would, you know, I just assumed that that was how it's done. But yeah, there was discussions and arguments and, and a lot of tea breaks and stuff.

• 1:12:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  I remember.

• 1:12:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I, I remember.

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  I remember thinking it was very casual compared to the way we did it. We, because we had studio musicians who were paid by the minute.

• 1:12:38Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  Even though they were paid very little, but.

• 1:12:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  But I, I think if anything, that was, I just assumed bands did that. They just.

• 1:12:47Billy Corgan?

  I think it might have been in Jeff Emmerich's book, which is really a great book about them recording.

• 1:12:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:12:52Billy Corgan?

  It might have been in there where I read, but he was saying that the one thing that he found interesting is they would listen to every take. If they did like four takes of a song, they would all come in and they'd listen to every take, good or bad. And they kind of make mental notes and then go back out.

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  I didn't know that.

• 1:13:09Billy Corgan?

  It's very interesting, you know?

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  That makes sense, though.

• 1:13:12Billy Corgan?

  Because, you know, when you think of these great, there's so many moments, you can't even just pick a dozen, you would fall short, but their ability to go in and obviously Paul McCartney is, is, was visionary in the way that he produced the records. That was more so him than, than the other guys, but.

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:13:31Billy Corgan?

  Their ability to kind of create a mini movie, even as early as, you know, sort of Rubber Soul, it starts to form into this holographic thing that they're able to do and do it quickly.

• 1:13:42Speaker 02

  Yes, amazing, I know. And the thing is, when, now that a lot of those outtakes have been released.

• 1:13:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  And you listen to them, they kind of go, well, I get it. That wasn't as good as the master, you know?

• 1:13:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  They picked the right one in every case.

• 1:13:55Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  There's none where you go, this is way more exciting.

• 1:13:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  Why did then, why did they miss this?

• 1:14:01Billy Corgan?

  They definitely reached kind of the end of the particular barrel on that. I, I love the band and I love the history and I got all the bootlegs, but there comes a point where you're like, okay, I've.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:14:11Billy Corgan?

  I feel like I've, I've heard it.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  I know why they didn't put this one out.

• 1:14:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, and, and God bless, you know?

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:20Billy Corgan?

  Just, just one last thing here, because we talked, we talked on it briefly. I guess more, it's, it's more atmosphere. I think it's a beautiful way to end because, like we said before, you played at a time where there was this hurricane going on with the gigs with young fans, that basically the discovery of what we would now call the modern rock and roll.

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:14:42Billy Corgan?

  There had been Elvis, but this was something different. It extended now beyond just the personality of one artist, where, you know, Hermits Hermits were getting, you know, run over by teen fans.

• 1:14:52Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:14:53Billy Corgan?

  There was this, this incredible hue and cry of enthusiasm.

• 1:14:57Speaker 02

  Yes. Well, I think American audiences particularly, they'd read about all this Beatlemania.

• 1:15:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  And they'd seen it in the movie.

• 1:15:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  So they kind of went, well, now we know how it's supposed to behave. You know, we, our first taste of that was when we, our first gig in America, one of the very first gigs, was we played the World's Fair in New York.

• 1:15:16Billy Corgan?

  Sixty-four.

• 1:15:17Speaker 02

  Sixty-four. Played the, the Unisphere or whatever they called it, that thing that's on the way out to the airport. And we'd had a, a, um, moat filled with water around the stage.

• 1:15:31Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  And the police were going, oh, don't worry, you know, we got the soil under control. And of course, the minute we came out, came on, all the screaming girls jumped in the moat and swam across to the stage and jumped out from the stage. So it was incredibly exciting. It was like an early version of a wet t-shirt contest. And Gordon and I were immediately enthralled and kind of went, this is the place for us.

• 1:15:51Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

  You know, audiences are insane.

• 1:15:53Billy Corgan?

  Um.

• 1:15:54Speaker 02

  And they learned that from the Beatles.

• 1:15:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Are you, are you, I don't know if wistful is the right word. I mean, how do you view those times now? You know, with, now, knowing what happened, knowing that so much of the music has survived, meaning people are still listening, interested?

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  Well, it's extraordinary. I mean, that, that, that's what, I suppose that would, is what would strike me most, is that at the time, every interview you ever did, or the Beatles ever did, if you, if you go and look at any of them, somebody asks the question, what are you going to do when this is all over?

• 1:16:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  Because there was an absolute conviction that this had a finite timeline to run. And then, you know, and Paul and John, interestingly, their answer to that question was, we will be songwriters. Because they admired Goffin and King as much as they admired Elvis.

• 1:16:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  They knew that was a respectable career. Ringo, I think, said he wanted to open a hairdressing saloon. So, so, uh, but there was no question, or Freddie Garrity, Freddie and the Dreamers would go back to being a postman.

• 1:16:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:57Speaker 02

  Whatever it was, but there was no question it was going to end. So nobody could have foreseen the fact.

• 1:17:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  That all these decades later, that the, the music is a whole new respect and a whole new analytical figuring out going on.

• 1:17:12Billy Corgan?

  Let's give a little plug to your great show. I listened to it, your serious show, if you don't mind.

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  Thank you very much. No, by all means. Um, no, I enjoy doing it. It's, it's, I, you'd think that we'd, again, we'd run out of time and ideas and, because, you know, the Beatles only recorded a certain finite number of songs. The Beatles' channels played them all endlessly, but they all still sound good. When I, when I do my show, one of the pleasures of the show, oddly enough, is getting to put on headphones and, and listen to the track as we're playing it live on the air.

• 1:17:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  Because every time you listen to that, those things are on headphones carefully. You hear, find something new or new, something you'd forgotten. You know, you think you know the track in your head and you, oh, listen, what's that cowbell doing there?

• 1:17:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:58Speaker 02

  That's something different. It's more.

• 1:18:00Billy Corgan?

  Well, God bless. Thank you, Peter. And great talking to you.

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  Thank you very much. My pleasure. It's an honor and a pleasure.

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

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