Jimmy Jam | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

"He didn’t fire us. He freed us.” Billy Corgan welcomes legendary songwriter and producer Jimmy Jam to The Magnificent Others. Jimmy explains how he and Terry Lewis broke Prince’s rule against producing artists outside The Time and how getting fired opened the door to one of music’s most successful partnerships. Jimmy shares how he got his first professional gig at 12, filling in for a drummer in his father’s band—and how his mother made sure he was paid like a pro. He recalls meeting Terry as a teenager and bringing their different musical tastes together. With Janet Jackson, Jam and Lewis built Control around her experiences and attitude, helping her become an active voice in her music. Jimmy also explains how their “funky bottom, pretty top” sound evolved, why young artists need skills beyond singing and social media, and why AI should come with clear labeling, permission and compensation for creators. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

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• 1:29Speaker 00

  We always wanted to make the artist their own, where people would go, oh, that's their record made specifically for them.

• 1:37Billy Corgan?

  The music is great. The songs were great. The production was fresh. You guys were just killing it.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  What it did was it proved that we could vary our sound, but still, the records could work.

• 1:49Billy Corgan?

  I remember turning to my girlfriend at the time. I said, this is the most talented person I've ever seen in my life.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  Prince just goes, I told you guys not to produce other groups. And we said, yeah. And he said, and you produced the SOS Band? And we said, yeah. And he said, so you're fired?

• 2:08Billy Corgan?

  You're literally in this kind of kingdom, for lack of a better word.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:12Billy Corgan?

  With the hottest artist on the planet.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:15Billy Corgan?

  You get kicked like right out the door.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  You just want a seat at the table. Well, sometimes you've just got to build the table.

• 2:21Billy Corgan?

  Hey, great music is great music. And if we're going to make hits, we'll make hits.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  I got so many hits, it don't make me hurt you.

• 2:29Billy Corgan?

  Jimmy Jam, thank you for being here today.

• 2:31Speaker 00

  Well, thank you for having me.

• 2:32Billy Corgan?

  Great to see you.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  Great to see you.

• 2:35Billy Corgan?

  When you've had such a long and incredibly fruitful musical life as a musician, fellow musician, I immediately go to like, what's your first, your first musical sort of thing? Like where music spoke to you?

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 2:52Billy Corgan?

  I know your dad is a good, great musician. But I, but my point is, is like, when's the first time something like popped out to you musically?

• 3:01Speaker 00

  I just remember as a kid, I was always, um, I was into rhythm. And I remember, um, I would stand in front of our TV. I remember we got this big color TV, which was back in the 60s, was a big deal. And I remember I used to stand in front of it. And whenever there was music on, I would just beat on the top of the TV. And my parents finally said, you know, we should just get him a drum set. Get him out of the way.

• 3:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 3:26Speaker 00

  And, um, but I just remember, um, and my mom was the one that had, she was in charge of the record player. So, basically, whatever songs I heard growing up.

• 3:38Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  I remember Ray Charles.

• 3:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  Um, things like that. That was the thing that I always heard music from her perspective.

• 3:47Billy Corgan?

  Ah, interesting.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  And so, I always say, I got my musical talent from my dad, who plays. But I got my musical appreciation from my mom.

• 3:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  So, that was my combination of kind of.

• 3:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 4:00Speaker 00

  Growing up with stuff.

• 4:01Billy Corgan?

  Um, your father, James Cornbread Harris, pianist? Yes?

• 4:05Speaker 00

  Yes, he is.

• 4:06Billy Corgan?

  And I thought it was so remarkable. And is it true you were playing with him when you were 12 years old?

• 4:12Speaker 00

  My first professional gig was playing drums for my dad.

• 4:16Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  And.

• 4:17Billy Corgan?

  Now, that's, that's a lot of pressure. My father was a musician too, and I can't imagine that pressure.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  Well, it kind of evolved. So, what happened was, you know, me and my mom used to go watch him play on the weekends. Every weekend, he'd have a gig and we'd go watch him play. And he always had trouble keeping a drummer. It would always, the drummer would show up late or there would be some sort of thing.

• 4:37Billy Corgan?

  It's just every drummer story.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think it, I think it's a pretty common theme.

• 4:41Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  And so, anyway, one of the, one of the evenings, the drummer was going to be an hour late. And my dad was going to do four sets. So, the guitar player in the group said, why don't you just let your son play? He knows all your songs. And he said, okay, cool. So, I sat behind the drums for the first set of the evening.

• 4:57Billy Corgan?

  This is 12 years old.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  12 years old. Went well. Uh, maybe a week or two later, the drummer wasn't showing up at all. For whatever reason, he was booked on another gig or whatever it was. And Coffee, Coffee was the name of the guitar player. Coffee says, just let Jimmy play. He knows, he knows the whole sets.

• 5:16Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  I played four sets with him. At the end of the night, everybody loved it. Everybody thought it was great. And Coffee said, why don't you just hire your son? And so, my dad said, yeah, you got it. Well, then my mom said, how much are you going to pay him?

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Because she was my agent, right?

• 5:35Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, right.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  How much are you going to pay him? And he said, he said something like, oh, I'll kick him out 20 bucks or something like that. She said, no, no, no, no, no. You're going to pay him just like you pay a regular drummer. So, that started my savings account. And that was my first professional deal.

• 5:50Billy Corgan?

  That's so cool.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  That was, that was 1973.

• 5:53Billy Corgan?

  Were you attracted? Because, you know, you grew up in such an incredible time for music production.

• 6:00Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 6:00Billy Corgan?

  Were you attracted to the sound of records? If you know what I mean by that?

• 6:04Speaker 00

  Yes. Oh, my God, yes. So, the, uh, the Supremes had an album. Uh, I'll never forget this, probably 68? I want to say something around there. Um, and I remember we were like at a family reunion or something barbecue thing. And they had this album, this gold album. And it said, The Supremes Sing Holland Dozier Holland.

• 6:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  And I, and I was hearing the music that was coming off of this album. And I just was amazed. And I said to my dad, I said, what is Holland Dozier Holland? Because to me, Holland was a country. I have no idea. He said, those are the songwriters. And I said, the songwriters? And he's, and I said, what does that mean? And he said, so, he said, you know, on a seven inch single back in the day, he said, if you look underneath the title of the song, there's in the parentheses, there's a name. That's who wrote the song. Not the artist who's singing it, but who wrote the song. I was, my life was changed.

• 6:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  And I was probably eight years old at that point. You know, nine years old. And I went after every song I heard, I'm looking between the parentheses. Who wrote it?

• 7:09Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  So, Holland Dozier Holland in the Motown days, Norman Whitfield, Smokey Robinson, all of those names.

• 7:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  And then, as it got into the 70s, it was always Gamble and Huff and Tom Bell. And that was my, always my thing. I always gravitated straight to who produced it? Who wrote it? I wanted to know who engineered it. That was kind of the nerd in me. I just, that was my thing. Yeah.

• 7:33Billy Corgan?

  You know, uh, just to nerd talk to you for a second. Um, you know, back in the day, Barry Gordy had a little department at Motown where they would examine hit records and they would analyze the frequencies.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 7:47Billy Corgan?

  And they would actually try to match the frequencies. So.

• 7:50Speaker 00

  That's interesting.

• 7:52Billy Corgan?

  So, one big influence on Motown productions was when The Beatles hit.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 7:56Billy Corgan?

  That's when they started turning up the kick drum and trying to get that. And so, one cool thing I have is an original, Motown had custom EQs made. They'll hate custom EQs. So, I actually have one of the custom EQs made.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 8:09Billy Corgan?

  That Barry Gordy had commissioned because they had specific, you know, back when they had fixed EQs.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 8:15Billy Corgan?

  So, it's a fixed EQ, but it's all the Motown settings from like 68 or 70. Yeah.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 8:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, because if, because those records in particular, you know, and I know you know, your Motown is like, they had this almost like this metallic rain.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  They really did. They really did. It had its own sound. And particularly coming on, and remember, back in that day, it was AM radio. It wasn't stereo and nice, beautiful sounding radio.

• 8:41Billy Corgan?

  Oh, no. It's like, you got to get the little transistor up to your ear.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  Exactly right.

• 8:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  But the way those songs cut through in a way that, to me, a lot of songs didn't, that was amazing.

• 8:53Billy Corgan?

  Who had a better voice for AM radio than Diana Ross?

• 8:55Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 8:56Billy Corgan?

  Her voice on AM radio was like.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  The best.

• 8:58Billy Corgan?

  Like honey or something.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, the best.

• 9:01Billy Corgan?

  Um.

• 9:04Billy Corgan?

  You meet your future and forever partner Terry Lewis, 14 years old at school, is that?

• 9:12Speaker 00

  So it wasn't, no, and it wasn't. So here's the thing. So

• 9:15Billy Corgan?

  Oh, it was like a summer camp or something. Yeah.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah.

• 9:18Billy Corgan?

  I'm confusing with the other guy that you meet.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. No, no, no worries. Um, so the same year that I started drumming for my dad, which was 1973, that summer, I met Terry Lewis.

• 9:34Billy Corgan?

  What a year.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  And, uh, yeah, it was very pivotal. Seventy-three was a very pivotal year.

• 9:38Billy Corgan?

  You gotta check the astrology on that.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, very, very true. And, um, but I met Terry. He, um, we were, it was a program called Upward Bound. It was at the University of Minnesota.

• 9:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  University of Minnesota, you stayed in dorms, you know, like you were a college student, but obviously you weren't. And we were just junior high students at the time. And I remember I walked by an open dorm room, saw this brother sitting on a bed, playing a red, black and green bass, playing Cool in the Gang. And when I heard that, I just was like, oh, I got to get to know him. It was like love at first sight. He then saw me playing in the lunchroom. They had stored a bunch of the pianos to tune them and stuff for the off year. And, uh, I was down there playing allegedly. He always says, with a bunch of girls around me. I don't necessarily remember that. But he said he saw me with all the girls around me and said, oh, I got to get to know him. And at the end of that year, they said, let's do a little dance thing. And we put a little band together.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  And I said, okay, cool. I'll, I'll play drums. And he's, Terry said, I already got a drummer. And that drummer was Jelly Bean Johnson, who ended up becoming the time drummer.

• 10:41Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  Rest in peace Bean, just recently passed away. But, um, anyway, he said, you should play keyboard. Your dad plays keyboards. We went and stole my dad's keyboard from the club we were playing at. And we did this little gig and we just played a bunch of songs and it was so fun. We had no vocalist, but we just played like instrumental. I'm sure it was terrible, but that was the first time we got together. So that was 1973.

• 11:04Billy Corgan?

  I mean, you've been asked about your partnership so many times, but what was it about? Or maybe the best way to put it is, what is it about your relationship that now that you've had all this success in your life together? Cause even like, you know, I'm Googling away on your life story and you guys have your own Wikipedia entry together.

• 11:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 11:25Billy Corgan?

  You don't actually have your own Wikipedia.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 11:27Billy Corgan?

  He's in your Wikipedia or you're in his.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:31Billy Corgan?

  Which I thought was funny, right? Because you've certainly done enough to have your own Wikipedia entry, right?

• 11:37Billy Corgan?

  So, but what is it about your relationship that now that you look back and look at all the success? What, what is it about your, is it a trust? Is it like a psychic thing? Like what is at the heart of that? Because what an incredible partnership. And as you know, most musical partnerships do not last.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  Yes. So I think foundationally, I think it probably started with,

• 12:04Speaker 00

  the fact that we were coming from different musical places, first of all. I grew up a pop kid. I listened to nothing but pop music because there wasn't really black radio in Minneapolis at the time I was growing up.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  So I was into Seals and Crofts and America and Chicago and The Carpenters and Bread, anything with major seventh chords. That was my Nirvana. That was my, that was my thing, right? So

• 12:30Billy Corgan?

  Did you know Seals and Crofts were in a cult? Did you know that?

• 12:33Speaker 00

  No, I didn't know that. No.

• 12:34Billy Corgan?

  All those songs were based on them being in this kind of, oh, sorry. People are gonna get mad at me. They're Baha'i. Baha'i is not a cult, but it is cultish.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Ah, okay.

• 12:44Billy Corgan?

  Baha'i is kind of a non-denominational faith.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:47Billy Corgan?

  Some people think it's a cult. I don't think it's a cult. So that's unfair. Sorry to the Baha'i people. But, um, because we have a great Baha'i temple in Chicago. But, but, but they were very out about their faith. And a lot of their music was based on their faith.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Ah, no, I had no idea. I had no idea. I had no idea. So that was where I kind of, when I met Terry, I was coming in with that. And as a matter of fact, I'll never forget in seventy-three, when we met, I remember we had saved a little bit of money and he said, I said, I'm going to the record store. And he said, what are you getting? I said, I'm getting a new Chicago album, Chicago Six. And he said, Chicago? He said, what about Earth, Wind and Fire? What about New Birth? What about Tower of Power? What about? And I'm like going, who are they?

• 13:31Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  He said, what? He puts on New Birth, I can understand it, which was a Bobby Womack remake, but one that they did, that's just classic. I mean, it's amazing. He puts that record on and like my life changed in that instant.

• 13:44Billy Corgan?

  So amazing. You weren't familiar with that side of the musical spectrum.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah. So

• 13:49Billy Corgan?

  Cause that, because that's as far as, let's call it what they used to calmly call R and B. That's an incredible period of time just for R and B music.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  Oh my God. Oh, it was the best of the best. No.

• 14:00Billy Corgan?

  Like I had, you know, I had Verdine in that chair not too long ago. And we were talking about early days.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 14:05Billy Corgan?

  With his brother. And I mean, what an incredible time. And they're basically building the future of, of R and B music.

• 14:12Speaker 00

  Absolutely right. Well,

• 14:14Billy Corgan?

  So you kind of stumbled into that.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  No, we, we did. And, and that was the thing. When Terry turned me on, like Earth, Wind and Fire was basically our, between that and Cool in the Gang, Earth, Wind and Fire was literally our soundtrack of us meeting was him turning me on to those records.

• 14:27Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  And me going, wow, or hearing Tower of Power with David Gerbaldi, who's like, great, one of the greatest drummers ever. And, you know, just all of those things. So I think foundationally, that was one of the things that really brought us together.

• 14:40Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  Was we, because I then turned, I tend to turn him on to the things that I liked. And we found some intersection with like, there were things like Funk Forty-Nine, like Joe Walsh, like those kinds of things where we both were like, oh yeah, this is, this is great. Um, but yeah, it was, it was really interesting. When we started trying to write together, it was interesting. We had, you know, Terry would come up with a real, and Terry was really into P funk. So George Clinton, Parliament Funkadelic, that was his thing, right?

• 15:09Billy Corgan?

  People who are into P funk, they have a certain brain.

• 15:11Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:12Billy Corgan?

  It's a certain brain. You gotta be down with the P funk.

• 15:14Speaker 00

  You do.

• 15:15Billy Corgan?

  Cause I toured with George Clinton in ninety-four and Lollapalooza. And I got to know George pretty well. And that is a, George lived in some cosmos that I

• 15:23Speaker 00

  Yes, he did.

• 15:23Billy Corgan?

  I need a spaceship to get to.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  Yes, he did. Yes, he did. He, he, yeah. George is so amazing, but it was the musicians that he assembled to do that and put that music together. It was just some of the best, you know, musicians, you know, particularly for keyboard guy like me between Bernie Worrell and Junie Morrison. Those two guys, man, just

• 15:45Billy Corgan?

  But even just the idea of a collective band, so visionary.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:49Billy Corgan?

  Like it makes total sense these days with the way people operate.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:52Billy Corgan?

  Back then, the idea of this kind of collective band, like who's the singer, who's the

• 15:56Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:57Billy Corgan?

  Like everybody's kind of on stage. It's a party.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Yes. No, it was, it was a whole different concept. And Terry was really into that. And when we tried to write songs together, it was funny because I'd, I'd come up with this little pretty thing and Terry would put this funk thing on. I go, no, no, no, no, no. Or he'd come up with this funk thing and then I put this pretty little thing and he'd go, no, no, no, no. And, and that was the way we, we started writing together.

• 16:20Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 16:20Speaker 00

  And, but we finally found, uh, we always called it the funky bottom and pretty top. And it kind of became the signature where we figured out, we did a record later, well, later on, which documentary in the eighties now. But we did a record with SOS Band called Just Be Good To Me.

• 16:36Billy Corgan?

  I was, I was listening to it today.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  And that was probably the first record that really, we came together where it's pretty, there's Glock and Spiel bells. There's all these kind of melody, but then there's this funky bottom. And sort of that's, that's where we found ourselves. But the other thing we did was we shook hands and we just said fifty fifty. So it made, anything we would do creatively, songwriting wise, there was nothing to ever talk about. So like literally there'd be songs that I'd write a hundred percent by myself, but he's still fifty percent his and vice versa. But if you take that out of it, the, well, that's my melody. Well, that's my harmony. Well, that's my lyric. Well, that was my, you take all of that discussion out of it,

• 17:21Speaker 00

  then you can just go create. And so we knew over the long run, we're going to have periods of time where maybe he isn't quite feeling the creativeness. Or I'm not going to feel the cra- but it doesn't matter.

• 17:32Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  And it's sort of like, I realize now in watching, when I watched the Beatles documentary, that like

• 17:37Billy Corgan?

  Bring them up.

• 17:38Speaker 00

  Lennon McCartney. Because I just thought they sat in a room together and made music, but they didn't. They each were individuals. Sometimes they sat in a room together, but a lot of times they did it.

• 17:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:46Speaker 00

  At the end of the day, it was Lennon and McCartney. That's the way it is with Terry and I.

• 17:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  And a lot of times even on credits, a lot of times people will turn in the credits and they'll have just my name if I worked with them, or they'll just have Terry's name. And I always say, no, no, it's gotta be both names. It's always going to be both names, even if I'm the only one you see.

• 18:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  You know, um, so we're separate in our togetherness.

• 18:09Billy Corgan?

  Wow, that's so beautiful.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  And we each get to work and do exactly what we want to do. And it's just, it was, it was that the foundation was laid in the right way, I guess I would say.

• 18:20Billy Corgan?

  So sort of in the same part of your life, you got this other guy at school.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:26Billy Corgan?

  You know, the, the purple one.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 18:30Billy Corgan?

  So there's so much there, but like, let's just start here. First impressions of this precocious musical person we all know as Prince.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  Yes. I, I easily the most

• 18:47Speaker 00

  I guess I would say jaw dropping musical talent I ever heard in my life.

• 18:53Billy Corgan?

  You still feel that way?

• 18:55Speaker 00

  I absolutely do. I still do.

• 18:57Billy Corgan?

  I saw Prince live once. You know, it was one of these gigs like New York. He's like, he plays at 3am.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 19:02Billy Corgan?

  And it was the first time I'd ever seen him live. I mean, I'd seen him on TV, but I mean, like, live and he had, he had, uh, Shaka Khan.

• 19:09Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 19:10Billy Corgan?

  He had, um, uh, Larry Graham.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 19:13Billy Corgan?

  You know, and, and the whole thing was just, and I remember turning to my girlfriend at the time and said, this is the most talented person I've ever seen in my life.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 19:24Billy Corgan?

  He's so talented, it's unfair.

• 19:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, that's.

• 19:27Billy Corgan?

  And he said one of those quotes, like, it was, sorry to interrupt you.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  No, no, great.

• 19:30Billy Corgan?

  He said one of those quotes, like somebody was calling out, you know, probably for Purple Rain.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:34Billy Corgan?

  And he said something, he goes, I can't do his voice, but he goes, I got so many hits, don't make me hurt you.

• 19:42Speaker 00

  Right. I got so many hits, don't make me hurt you. That's right. That's all he would say.

• 19:46Billy Corgan?

  So first impressions, right? Okay. So give me, just give me first impressions.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  So first impressions was, so this is junior high school, middle school, I guess, as it's called now.

• 19:55Billy Corgan?

  13, 14 years old.

• 19:55Speaker 00

  13 years old, 13 years old. And I remember we, uh, there was a piano class that you could take at the high school, which was like a couple of blocks up the street. And you get out of school for an hour. So it was like, that's great. So we said, oh, we're going to take the piano class. So anyway, we go to this piano class. And the teacher gives us, I don't know, London Bridge or Mary had a little lamb or some little easy piece of sheet music and says, learn this and play it. He said, okay, cool. Teacher walks out and they had this keyboard that you had headphones, but it was a bunch of keyboards all together. And so as soon as the teacher walks out, Prince goes and plays some sort of lick on the keyboard.

• 20:38Speaker 00

  And I was like, oh, you play? And he says, yeah. And I said, oh, and then I played like a blues lick because my dad was a blues player. His dad was a jazz player. So I played this blues lick and he like, looked at me and then we just jammed.

• 20:52Speaker 00

  Until the teacher came back and then said, and now we're like,

• 20:57Speaker 00

  oh my God. And it was the funniest thing. And we did that, but that's how we met for the first time. Anyway, at the end of this class, uh, they were putting a band together to do a musical at the end of the year at school. And they said, who wants to play in the band? And we both raised our hands. And, uh, they said, Prince, what do you want to play? And he said guitar. And I looked at him like guitar. They said, Jimmy, what do you want to play?

• 21:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  I said drums. And he looked at me like drums, right? So we get into the rehearsal.

• 21:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  He walks in with his guitar. He plugs it in. He plays the solo from Chicago, make me smile.

• 21:37Billy Corgan?

  Oh, my.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  Terry Kath, note for note.

• 21:40Billy Corgan?

  That Terry Kath's amazing guitar.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  Terry Kath is amazing. Note for note, he plays this tone, everything just. And I'm like going, okay. So anyway, I'm on the drums. We play.

• 21:50Billy Corgan?

  What a flex too.

• 21:51Speaker 00

  Right. I know. Right. And so I go to the bathroom. I hear somebody on the drums. I'm thinking it's the drum teacher. I walk in, it's Prince tearing the drums up and hands me the sticks back. And I'm like, dude. And this is, you know, he was probably 14 years old at this point. And, and I just, I never had seen anything like that in my life. And I, and I, and I continue to feel the same way.

• 22:18Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  To this day, like at every, at every measure, that was just his, his brilliance.

• 22:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. One time I worked with Sylvia Massey is a great engineer.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 22:27Billy Corgan?

  And I worked a lot with Prince. So, you know, you get to know somebody, you're in the studio. As you know, you kind of just sit there, you talk between takes or whatever.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 22:35Billy Corgan?

  And she had just finished something with Prince. And I said, I wasn't looking for the gossip because there's always a lot of gossip about Prince. And I'm sure you've heard the stories and you sure you have some of your own, but, but, I was like, no, I want to, I'm not, I told her, I'm not looking for gossip. I want to know the musician.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 22:51Billy Corgan?

  And because I asked the question the right way, she goes, it's insane. She goes, he'll come in and he'll go, go to this da, da, da. He'll play one take, maybe two sometimes. Everything's done in an hour and he splits.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:10Billy Corgan?

  And then he goes, as he's going out the door, go ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. He goes, does whatever he comes back. She goes, it's, it's not like anybody I've ever worked with. He's, she's like, he's so talented. It's just crazy.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 23:23Billy Corgan?

  And you almost get used to it because he can just do it.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  I remember we would go in for sessions. I mean, later on in life, we had a chance to work with Michael Jackson and somebody said, what's the difference? And I said, the difference is, is Prince will start a song at the beginning of the day. And it's totally done at the end of the day. And I mean, totally done.

• 23:43Billy Corgan?

  Every.

• 23:44Speaker 00

  Every, every element of it is done.

• 23:46Billy Corgan?

  Hear it. You can hear it. So I'm sorry to interrupt, but it's like, as a fan, what always struck me is like, everything's so fresh.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:54Billy Corgan?

  You can tell it's not poured over.

• 23:56Speaker 00

  Spontaneous.

• 23:57Billy Corgan?

  It's got that vibe of like, this is what I'm into today.

• 24:02Speaker 00

  That's why, you know, I always say collaborative music always sounds better to me because when you get everybody's personality all working on the same page or something that's magic about that.

• 24:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  But Prince is the one person to me that is able, was able to pull that off. And particularly, I was talking to Questlove about this a while back. We were talking about debut albums. And I said, my favorite debut album is For You, the very first Prince album. And he said, why? And I said, because if you think about it, if you had no idea who did it, you just put the music on, you'd go, who's playing keys on that? Man, who's singing that? Wait, who's playing guitar on that? Wait, who's the bass player on that?

• 24:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  Like every, you would think that each musician is some individual just killing it. And it's all Prince.

• 24:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. And I said, there's very few people to me that can do that. The only other person that kind of, in a whole different sense is Todd Rundgren. When Todd Rundgren used to do his records with everything, and I thought he was amazing at that also, but.

• 25:02Billy Corgan?

  Great producer too, just like Prince.

• 25:04Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly.

• 25:05Billy Corgan?

  That ability to like, vision, execution and sing.

• 25:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:11Billy Corgan?

  And make hits, it's like.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  Well, and Prince, if you think about it too, he was also into the marketing. He was into the look. He was, I mean, he.

• 25:21Billy Corgan?

  Well, that's where it gets unfair.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, that's what I'm saying. It's, it's on, it's on a whole different level. He used to come back in the, in the time days when he would come rehearse the time. He would come to our rehearsal for six hours and rehearse us and just drive us, drive us, drive us, drive us. Then he'd go to the revolution rehearsal and he'd, you know, do 12, you know, six hours with them. Then he'd go to the studio all night. I don't know when he ever slept. Go to the studio all night. He'd come back in with a cassette. And he'd say, I did this last night. And he'd pop it in, it would be like 1999 or something.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  What the heck? But we never, but, but I'll, I'll tell you the thing that Prince work ethic was the thing that he taught me more than anything else. I remember we were rehearsing seven, seven, seven, 93, 11 time record. And he's watching our rehearsal. And then when we get done doing the song, he goes, and he always called me Jimmy Jam. He never just called me Jimmy. It was Jimmy Jam. Jimmy Jam, what are you doing with your left hand?

• 26:21Speaker 00

  I said, I'm not doing anything Prince. I said, I'm just doubling Terry's bass part. That's all I do on the record. And then he said, it's got to be bigger than the record. You know, Mir Monty's part. So now I'm like, okay.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  So now I'm playing with both hands. Okay, great. He says, Jimmy Jam, what note are you singing on the chorus? So I'm not singing a note on the chorus. You know, they got the harps, the three part harmony. They, they got it. Find a note. It's got to be bigger than the record. They're right. So now I'm playing seven, seven, seven, ninety three, eleven. Great. Song ends, he goes,

• 26:56Billy Corgan?

  Jimmy Jam.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Jimmy Jam.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  Why aren't you doing the choreography? I said, Prince, I'm behind the keyboard. What do you want me to do? He says, it's simple choreography. You should be able to do it. Like, okay, now. So now I'm behind the keyboard. Now I'm trying to hit my note. I'm trying to do the little four corners dance and stuff. Totally frustrated. End of rehearsal, we walk out. Next day at rehearsal, we walk in, Prince goes, seven, seven, seven. And I'm like, ah, here we go. We start playing the song. I realize about a minute into the song.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  I'm playing my part. I'm singing my note. I'm hitting the choreography. And now I've even found time to take a hanky out my pocket and pat myself, tip my hat. And I realized, here's somebody that saw me better than I saw myself.

• 27:44Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 27:45Speaker 00

  He wasn't looking at what I couldn't do. I'm looking at what I can't do.

• 27:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 27:48Speaker 00

  He's looking at what you can do.

• 27:50Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  And not only can you do it, you can do it even better than you think. And there's somebody, there's people are special that can do that. Terry, my partner, does that for me all the time. He sees me better than I see myself. So I just think that he had, and you think about the people that he had around him. He really elevated everybody that he had around him. I mean, everybody became a better musician, a better drummer, a better seamstress, if they were the clothes makers.

• 28:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  Uh, you know, better lighting people, it better, everybody around him really got better.

• 28:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 28:20Speaker 00

  So.

• 28:21Billy Corgan?

  Um, in these years before the time thing kicks in, which is early eighties.

• 28:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:28Billy Corgan?

  You know, there's these kind of years.

• 28:32Billy Corgan?

  You're, are you just local banding? Are you, do you have a dream? Like, just walk me through that a little bit.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  So that part of my life was Terry and I were, first of all, in competing bands. After we did our first little thing.

• 28:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  We were in Battle of the Bands all the time. I had a band, I was very Philadelphia inspired.

• 28:51Billy Corgan?

  It's Gamble Huff.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  Yes, totally inspired by that music, but of course it didn't have string sections and stuff, so I didn't.

• 28:57Billy Corgan?

  Did you like Undisputed Truth?

• 28:59Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, absolutely.

• 29:00Billy Corgan?

  By the way, for people don't know, you gotta check out that band. What a band.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know.

• 29:03Billy Corgan?

  Kind of like Sly on acid?

• 29:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:07Billy Corgan?

  With the, the silver wigs and the.

• 29:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, amazing. But you know, I love that music and I just, but I would do it with synthesizers. Because I didn't have string sections and stuff.

• 29:18Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  So there's a, there's a very obscure record that was dug up. It's, I think it's called 1514 Oliver Avenue, which was the basement that we rehearsed in my band. It was called Mind and Matter. And we were like a Philly style singing, I didn't sing, I wrote the songs. But it was like a Philly style singing group with a backing band. And, um, all the songs sounded like wannabe, you know, kind of Gamble and Huff songs. But, um, when we would battle at the bands with people, like we would do with Flight Time, now Flight Time with Terry's band. But Terry's band was like a total, you know, funkadelic, you know, huge horn section, crazy costumes. Like, you know, he was on a whole different thing. But I remember we did this one gig.

• 30:03Speaker 00

  And Terry always talks about it. We kicked their, we kicked Flight Time's, because we had, basically because we had all our friends and family there. And, uh, we killed it. We killed it. And then the next gig we did was this outdoor gig. And I remember they came out, you know, with all these crazy costumes and they kicked our. And I remember both, we're both looking at each other going, that Terry Lewis is, he's dope. And he's looking at me like, that's Terry Jam, so. And we finally figured out, you know, we need to, you know, we need to actually get together.

• 30:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  But I had, by that point in time, I got a, not, I guess I would say disillusioned. The guys in my band were all older than me. I'm doing all this at, you know, 15, 16 years old.

• 30:40Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  The guys all had regular jobs. They had kids. They had all those things. And I'm taking it as, oh, you guys aren't serious about it. And they're like, no, we're serious. We got jobs. We got stuff we need to do. So I quit actually making music and I started DJing.

• 30:55Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  So I started DJing at all the different clubs. And every night of the week, I would be at a different club. I was like literally at the teen club on Sunday. I was at the gay club on Monday. I was at the ladies night R and B club on Tuesday. I was at the upscale club on Wednesday. I was at, at playing different music. Some of it was mixing. Some of it was just talking and hyping the crowd.

• 31:14Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 31:15Speaker 00

  Did all that kind of stuff. But that was sort of my musical education about what could pack a dance floor and what could clear a dance floor. And between that and learning to play, I broke up with a girl, or a girl broke up with me, I should say. And I was walking past this place and Terry's band was rehearsing in there. And I didn't know it. I walked in and I said, Terry, what's up? And he says, oh, we rehearsing here. He said, you gotta come join the band. And I said, no, man. I said, I just broke up with this girl, man. Terry would call me every day, this before cell phones. He'd call me on my phone every day at 10:00 in the morning. Jam, what you gonna do? What you gonna do? I said, Terry, man, I don't even have any of my equipment. I got, I just have my DJ equipment now. We'll get you keyboards, man. What kind of keyboards you need?

• 31:54Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 31:54Speaker 00

  He was relentless about it. And that was the thing that kind of drew me back in. And our band was great because part of my musical education, we were playing cover songs.

• 32:05Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 32:05Speaker 00

  So it was about learning how to play the hit records that existed. And play them better than anybody else. And we could do that. Cause we could decipher, our brains could decipher, oh, it's that synthesizer on that setting on that kind of thing. And our band was like the top band, uh.

• 32:23Billy Corgan?

  And this is, sorry, but this is in the era where being a great cover band in the clubs before the DJ thing really kicked in.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  Before, yeah.

• 32:29Billy Corgan?

  It was big money.

• 32:30Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah, it was.

• 32:31Billy Corgan?

  You could, you could, sorry, and tell me if you, if you have a different impression, but.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:35Billy Corgan?

  It was a time when you didn't have to be a famous musician. You could just make a good living. You'd be local hero.

• 32:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 32:42Billy Corgan?

  And that was, a lot of people, as you know, they would just kind of fall into that.

• 32:46Speaker 00

  We, so the reason we didn't fall into that, because we very well could have fallen into that. And at one point in time, I literally was DJ, there was a club called The Fox Trap. I was literally DJing upstairs. Terry's band was playing downstairs. And I used to come down and watch Terry's band. He used to come up and watch me spin records. And he was like, man, you're a rock star. You need to be in a band, right? And I was like, okay, cool. But what happened was for us, was we were, you know, a really good band. And we, but we didn't have the luxury of sitting in Minneapolis, excuse me, because a bunch of the clubs wouldn't hire us because we were black. So.

• 33:26Billy Corgan?

  Wow. So over, would they tell you that? Or you just, it was a vibe?

• 33:30Speaker 00

  It just, it just is what it was. Well, here's the thing. It would be different if the music we were playing was different. But they were hiring white bands to play R and B music. So there'd be a white band in a club playing R and B music, but they wouldn't let us play. So, but, so, but what happened, but the good news in that was, you know, the saying now is, you know, you just want a seat at the table. Well, sometimes you just gotta build the table.

• 33:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  So this is what we ended up doing. And this is where the entrepreneur part of Jam and Lewis came into kind of fruition. We ended up having a, there was a hotel called The Dykman downtown Minneapolis. They had, they were, the hotel had been condemned. They were gonna tear it down in six months or whatever. And it had this big, beautiful ballroom. It was just sitting empty. So we went to them and we said, what are you guys doing with the ballroom? And they said, nothing. And we said, okay, let's do a deal. We'll take the door. We want to promote an event. We'll take the door. We'll charge, you know, three bucks or whatever it is at the door. You guys get all the liquor sales. That's all you, you know, the drinks are yours. That was it. We had, um, probably a thousand, 1,500 people show up that night.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  Clubs are sitting empty. And then club guys are going, wait, where's everybody at tonight? And they said, well, they're all watching the band you wouldn't hire. Well, then of course they all came after us.

• 34:50Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 34:51Speaker 00

  And we were like, no, we're good. We're good.

• 34:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, cause now you're making bank.

• 34:54Speaker 00

  Now we're making bank, but.

• 34:55Billy Corgan?

  And it's your show, yeah.

• 34:56Speaker 00

  Right. But the thing was, we always took the money that we made and put it into a bigger PA. Better lighting, better synthesizers. Like, we always invested back in ourselves. That was kind of the thing. But we also realized that locally, that wasn't our thing. Our, our attention turned to, we need to be national.

• 35:17Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 35:18Speaker 00

  And so, um, when the time happened, that was the big turning point. Because that was, because Prince had already made it. And that showed us that, okay, so you can make it from the Twin Cities.

• 35:30Billy Corgan?

  What was the, what was the reaction in the, in the local community when he started making it? Like, were people excited?

• 35:36Speaker 00

  As musicians, oh yeah. No, we, we loved it. Because we knew, listen, we knew all the little studios he was trying to use to, to make his demos. We were using the same studios. I mean, everybody was trying to kind of do the same thing. So the fact that he made it was so encouraging to us.

• 35:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 35:52Speaker 00

  Um, and we had grown up, you know, he had his, but, you know, when I'm talking about the Battle of the Bands with Terry and Terry's band and my band. But Prince's band was part of that too. He had a band called Grand Central.

• 36:03Billy Corgan?

  Okay. Well, he loves his Larry Graham.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  Yes, he loved Larry Graham. But he had, so Andre Simone, who's my cousin, was his bass player.

• 36:10Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  Morris Day, who was the lead singer for the time, he was his drummer.

• 36:15Billy Corgan?

  Didn't know that.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Yes. Morris is one of, a world-class drummer. And, and David Garibaldi is his, like, his dude. So he could go, he could play any. Matter of fact, a bunch of Prince records, Morris Day's playing the drums on them.

• 36:30Billy Corgan?

  That's amazing.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  Like Let's Work, Let's Work. That's Morris. Controversy, that's Morris.

• 36:37Billy Corgan?

  I gotta go back and listen to that.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but anyway, but yeah, that was the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we just, it all came together in a, in a, I always say it a very divine way.

• 36:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  We didn't realize it as it was happening.

• 36:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 36:50Speaker 00

  But, um, but even, um, but Prince didn't want us to do things outside of the band. That was one of the kind of bones of contention, so to speak. Cause Terry and I wanted to write songs and do that. And he was like, nothing outside of the time. You can't do anything.

• 37:04Billy Corgan?

  So you, you already had a vision that you were gonna be a songwriting partner.

• 37:08Speaker 00

  We, yeah.

• 37:09Billy Corgan?

  Basically in, off of your heroes, right? You know, this idea that you could, you could be in the band, but you could also write.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  And I, and for me personally, I never thought of myself as a, a great live performer. I always thought of myself more as, I can help somebody who's a great live performer. Like, I'm, I'm not a scorer. I'm an assist guy, you know, in basketball terms. I'm, I like to assist. And that was my thing. And so we, so Terry, when we were on tour with the time, an opening for Prince. At the end of the first tour we did with Prince, which was the Controversy Tour. Terry said, I'm going to LA. Who's coming with me? And everybody said, why are you going to LA? And Terry said, cause they need us out there.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  And everybody said, and this will put the timestamp on it. Everybody said, no, man, I save my money to buy a VCR. That's when VCRs were like just hitting, right? This is eighty, eighty-two, right? So it was like, okay.

• 38:04Billy Corgan?

  I don't want to go to LA, I need a VCR.

• 38:05Speaker 00

  I need a VCR, right? So I said to Terry, I said, hey, man, I'll go. He said, okay, cool. And I said, but where are we going to stay? He said, we'll figure it out. I said, well, where are we going to get the equipment to make demos and stuff? He said, oh, we'll figure it out. That was his answer for everything. We'll figure it out. I just said, okay, cool. So we went to LA.

• 38:25Billy Corgan?

  So it's a plane flight or are you driving now?

• 38:27Speaker 00

  We actually, we actually had a plane. We actually, we had a cheap, you know, we always kept enough money to get to wherever we needed to get to.

• 38:34Billy Corgan?

  And then you'll deal with.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then we'll deal with it. And we found some people from Minneapolis that had a house. And we had just had a bedroom in their house. It was probably about as big as this area that we're speaking in here. We moved in a couple of cots. The whole day they were gone, I remember we went on, we went in the classifieds, found a four-track. I had a little Casio keyboard with a little drum machine built into it. Terry had his bass. We would go in the bathroom and we'd record vocals for the reverb in the bathroom. And we literally just did demos all day. We didn't have any money. We ate at a place called Golden Bird Chicken. They had a two ninety-nine special. We would go every day to, we'd walk to Golden Bird Chicken. This is funny now, walking in LA.

• 39:15Billy Corgan?

  You're not supposed to walk in.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  No, you're not supposed to walk in LA. We'd go to, we'd get our special. And people were like, man, you, what are y'all doing? Man, y'all out there starving. The police would pull us over while we were walking. This is funny, so the police.

• 39:27Billy Corgan?

  You're making hits.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  Right, but, but we, but so far we weren't really making hits, but we were, we were getting relationships, you know? And it was, but it was funny because the, the police, I remember we were walking to Golden Bird and the police stopped us. And they said, you guys aren't from here, are you? And we said, no. And because we had these big, you know, suits on, we had our time gear on. And it's, you know, ninety degrees in the middle of summer, right? And the guy said, man, you guys need some summer clothes, man. He said, I got a guy in Hollywood. He said, he'll hook you up with some clothes and stuff. We said, okay, cool.

• 39:57Billy Corgan?

  This the cop?

• 39:58Speaker 00

  Huh?

• 39:59Billy Corgan?

  Was this the cop?

• 39:59Speaker 00

  This is the cop. This is the cop. So, because we weren't doing anything wrong, right? So he, he gives us a card for the guy. We go to the store, the store's called Antenna. It's on Hollywood Boulevard, right? So we go to Antenna. And we said, hey, man, this guy told us to come in here. And he said, oh, that's my buddy, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, what do you need, man? We'll get you some stuff, whatever. And they got us, got us some stuff, got us some, put some clothes, gave us a great discount and stuff. So we were good, right? So in true, once again, Hollywood fashion. Fast forward, I don't know, ten years later, maybe.

• 40:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 40:34Speaker 00

  We're nominated for our first Grammy. No, no, not even, no, it actually happened after that. We're getting a star on the Walk of Fame, on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, right?

• 40:46Billy Corgan?

  And who's there?

• 40:48Speaker 00

  It was literally in front of this Antenna clothes store. And when we pulled up.

• 40:53Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 40:54Speaker 00

  The guy comes walking out and he said, hey, it's you guys. And we said, hey, it's you. He said, what are you doing? And he says, we're, I said, we're getting a star in front of your store. He said, oh, my God. Like, that's the kind of stuff that you could never.

• 41:04Billy Corgan?

  That's right out of a Hollywood movie.

• 41:05Speaker 00

  That's what I'm saying. You wouldn't even believe the script.

• 41:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  If it was written like.

• 41:08Billy Corgan?

  So, uh, stepping back one second.

• 41:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:13Billy Corgan?

  Is it true that Prince played everything on the time record or is that?

• 41:16Speaker 00

  On the first record, yes. Him, him and Morris Day.

• 41:19Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 41:19Speaker 00

  Him and Morris Day together.

• 41:21Billy Corgan?

  Was it, were you cool with that or were you just hired to be the touring band or how like?

• 41:26Speaker 00

  So we were cool with it because first of all, um, we were a really good cover band. So when he sent us the album, it was like, okay, we can do this.

• 41:37Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  And then, you know, I don't know, in our opinion, we played the songs better than the record. But of course, that was what he wanted.

• 41:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 41:44Speaker 00

  But we were so polished as a live band at that point. We would go out and do our twenty minutes or whatever, twenty-five minutes on the opening act.

• 41:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 41:53Speaker 00

  Of the, of the tour.

• 41:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 41:55Speaker 00

  And we were killing him.

• 41:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  Because he was like, I created Frankenstein, like what, like what happened? Like, um, but it was like, he wanted us to be our very best. And we would rehearse to the point where we would know the songs up and down, but we could just have fun while we were doing it.

• 42:12Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 42:13Speaker 00

  And I think that was the thing that really resonated with people. And also, and also, I remember our first gig was in Pittsburgh. And we're just walking around Pittsburgh and everybody was like, ain't y'all the time? And we're like, yeah. And they said, where's y'all's bodyguard? I said, bodyguard? They said, y'all just walking around downtown Pittsburgh with no bodyguard? We said, yeah. And they were like, oh, man, y'all serious? Like, they thought we were like serious gangsters or something.

• 42:37Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  But it was like, no, we just out exploring, you know? Just checking it out. We loved it. It was, it was such a great experience.

• 42:44Billy Corgan?

  From your, from your vantage point as a, as a, as a writer and producer, did you get to see Prince working in a studio environment? Can you just give me your perspective there on that?

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• 45:14Speaker 00

  He was, he was a genius. And when I say genius, uh, I, my, my son has a saying that genius isn't the idea, it's the execution of the idea.

• 45:24Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 45:25Speaker 00

  So I say genius because in Prince's mind, he had a piece of him that wanted to do R and B music. But in the artist Prince, he knew he wanted to move more in a rock way and he wanted to go in different lanes. So very much like George Clinton, who's one of his, you know, heroes.

• 45:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 45:48Speaker 00

  He figured by the time that would be his R and B lane. That would be his R and B record.

• 45:53Billy Corgan?

  Okay, now, now that makes total sense.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  Yes. And so that's what we were. And so, and through Morris, who was originally going to be the drummer in the time, Alexander O'Neal was going to be the lead singer originally. But Alex kind of talked himself out of the situation. So Morris became the lead singer. He could mold Morris and go, all you got to do is put your hand in your pocket and walk. You don't even really have to dance, although he did dance. But he said, you don't really have to do anything. And that was kind of the genius of it, was we were kind of the R and B version of Prince.

• 46:26Billy Corgan?

  That makes so much sense.

• 46:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:28Billy Corgan?

  Because I was a fan at the time, so I'm.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 46:31Billy Corgan?

  No pun intended, but I was paying attention to all this and I was fascinated by his, you know, his weird projects and vanity and there's, you know, he was, there was that period where it seemed like it was music. Every time you turn around, there's another song and a B-side and a, I mean, this period of.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  But think about, but once again, think about George Clinton. So you had Parliament, which was more the R and B side. You had Funkadelic that was more the rock side. But then you had Parley, which was the girls, that you had the brides of Frankenstein.

• 46:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 46:58Speaker 00

  You had Bootsy's Rubber Band. You had all of these kind of spinoffs, all kind of from the same brain. And that's what kind of Prince was, was, and it was, it was awesome. It was awesome.

• 47:08Billy Corgan?

  It must have been, uh, I guess I'm just asking more from like a vibe check. I mean.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:14Billy Corgan?

  It was such a rare moment because there was this musical explosion around him. And it wasn't just music. It was, I mean, I remember going to the mall and buying like, he had his own clothing line.

• 47:27Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:27Billy Corgan?

  I had like a purple rain shirt.

• 47:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 47:31Billy Corgan?

  His effect on, you know, I'm growing up in suburbia Chicago.

• 47:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:36Billy Corgan?

  His effect on a crowd that normally would not be interested in R and B music was huge.

• 47:42Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:43Billy Corgan?

  Suddenly they're acting like him, dressing like him.

• 47:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:46Billy Corgan?

  Very interested in this, who is this person? And as you know, with great stars, they have a way of bending gravity their direction.

• 47:53Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:54Billy Corgan?

  But from, from the inside, I mean, were you like, wow, this is, I mean, just give me a like a vibe check from standing inside all that?

• 48:01Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, he was always so aware, like when I say about even the marketing, the, if you remember the second Time album, it was, uh, just Morris on the cover by himself.

• 48:16Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 48:16Speaker 00

  And I remember we had taken a bunch of pictures and stuff. And then he walked into our rehearsal and he said, here's the, here's the album. And it's Morris on the cover all by himself. And if you flip the cover over, then it's all the rest of us. And we said, uh, Prince, um, why aren't we all on the cover of the record? And he said, and you remember, this is the days of record stores. So basically you walk in a record store and you'd see a wall and it would be nothing but album covers. That's all you'd see. And he said, if you walk into a record store, he said, which cover is going to stand out from all the other covers?

• 48:59Speaker 00

  This picture with the six of you on it? Or this picture of Morris going like this? With his eyes bugged out looking at his watch? And we said.

• 49:11Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 49:11Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 49:12Speaker 00

  So he was always very aware.

• 49:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  Of every aspect of it, and even for us. He said, you know, you have to dress. He said, you don't dress up to go on stage. You dress, your dress is on stage, you're on stage 24 hours.

• 49:28Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 49:28Speaker 00

  And that was the thing. And so that was the thing with, with, with us, we always had our suits, we always were, we were always dressed. And that was his thing. And the whole idea, if he decided purple's gonna be the color of my thing. So you guys can't wear purple, but you can wear any other color, but purple's off limits. Like he knew the whole, you know, ecosystem, if you will, of what the Prince environment should be. And the same with, and the same with Vanity 6. I mean, we were the backup band for Vanity 6.

• 49:58Billy Corgan?

  Playing behind a curtain.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  Playing behind a curtain, yes. And that backfired though, because I think what it did is it warmed us up. Like, like literally, I think he thought, I don't know what he thought when we did it, but we said, yeah, yeah, it'd be cool. But we did it, but literally the best shows we did were kind of the last shows of the 1999 tour. They didn't announce the time was gonna be there. It was just Prince and Vanity 6.

• 50:24Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 50:25Speaker 00

  And this was after Little Red Corvette caught on really big and started doing really well. And we watched the audiences change from a predominantly black audience to probably a half and half split.

• 50:35Billy Corgan?

  To the mall, the mall audience.

• 50:36Speaker 00

  Yes. And so, but what that did was, it was great because it gave us a chance to then play in front of that audience, which then expanded our audience. But the way he did it was, at the end of Nasty Girl, when they hit the last note, when we hit the last note of Nasty Girl, um, the curtain would come up and we'd launch straight in to get it up. And people's faces were just like, oh my God. Cause it was unexpected, but it was also the way we did it.

• 51:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 51:07Speaker 00

  Like, oh my God. And so then we'd do like a 45 minute set.

• 51:10Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, it was pre-internet, so it truly would have been a surprise.

• 51:13Speaker 00

  It was totally, yeah, pre-internet.

• 51:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 51:15Speaker 00

  Totally a surprise.

• 51:16Billy Corgan?

  That's so cool.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was fun. Fun times.

• 51:20Billy Corgan?

  So there's different ways to get into the story where he ultimately fires you guys. But let's start here. Um, you know, you, you, you start producing outside artists.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  We do. Behind, behind his back, we like literally were, we would rehearse Monday through Friday, we'd rehearse. Friday night after rehearsal, we'd get on a plane, we'd come to LA.

• 51:44Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  We'd do what was called 24 hour lockout at a studio, right?

• 51:49Billy Corgan?

  I remember.

• 51:50Speaker 00

  And then we'd do whatever act we were working with, could be Climax, could be, you know, whatever act we were working with at the time. And we would do that and then we'd fly back on like a red eye on Sunday night and then be at rehearsal. And that worked really, really well for a while, uh, until Jesse Johnson kind of ratted us out. And said, you guys, you guys, you got, you know, those guys are going to LA on the weekends and doing music, right? And we were like, yeah. So then we ended up, I remember a couple of times we were getting ready to leave and either rehearsals would go long, purposely long, or there'd all of a sudden be a Saturday rehearsal, you know?

• 52:31Speaker 00

  And, um, but I remember we used to drive the engineers crazy because, um, in LA, because we would come in and they'd go, how long do you guys think you'll work? And we'd say, we got 24 hour lockout. And they said, yeah, but that doesn't mean you work for 24 hours. And it's like, oh yes, it does. I might take a nap and Terry will work and Terry might take a nap and I'll work, but we're, we're taking these whole 24 hours.

• 52:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 52:52Speaker 00

  And that's how we did like all a bunch of our first records and stuff. But yeah, Prince found out about it and we actually played him a Climax record we did called Wild Girls. And, uh, he actually liked the record. He, but he, but then he said, but you can't, you can't work with anybody. You can't, you can't do that.

• 53:09Billy Corgan?

  Was this thinking, did you see it as a form of jealousy or was this thinking that you gotta stay focused on your gig?

• 53:15Speaker 00

  Uh, he didn't want us to give away the time sound. He thought we were gonna give away the time sound and we were very aware of not doing that. Um, and.

• 53:27Billy Corgan?

  Was he worried that you were sort of trying to ride the coattail in a way? Does that make sense?

• 53:31Speaker 00

  That could be, although he never, he never said that, he never articulated that. It was more or less, he didn't want the sound to be out there without, I guess, his involvement or that.

• 53:43Billy Corgan?

  That does kind of make a certain sense to me.

• 53:45Speaker 00

  Oh, it, it makes total sense. And the thing that Terry and I eventually got to was that it's tough to criticize the boss if you haven't been a boss. It's easy for people to criticize and go, well, we're not paid enough money. We should have a better hotel room, we should have that. But then when you become the boss and then those same things come at you, it's just a matter of how you handle it.

• 54:05Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 54:05Speaker 00

  So, but you know, and, and the one thing I will give Prince, I won't even the one thing, I shouldn't even say that. I give everything to Prince, but he outworked everybody. It wasn't like he was asking us to do stuff and then he wasn't doing it. And he was giving us great records. Terry and I always thought though, that if we're improving ourselves by learning the craft of music, we're gonna make the whole unit stronger.

• 54:32Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 54:33Speaker 00

  And the whole idea was never that Terry and I were never planning on leaving. But we're thinking, imagine if we get good at what we do, Prince is good at what he does. We have the other guys, cause Jelly Bean Johnson produced records on his own, Monte Moyer, the other keyboard player produced records on his own. Jesse Johnson, of course, produced records on his own. Imagine that as, you know, sort of a Motown or a Philly International thing where we're all together in this one group doing all of these records.

• 55:01Billy Corgan?

  And you have basically, there's real relationships there.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 55:05Billy Corgan?

  You know, like there's hometown, you got cousins, you got people grew up together. It's a different vibe inside and it goes even back to Motown.

• 55:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:13Billy Corgan?

  I read this thing about, um, I can't remember what book I was reading, it was a Motown book, but it was like all how like Gordy was dating somebody's sister and they knew each other from the projects and, and Marvin Gaye lived in this other project and they all kind of went to the same school and you go, well, that's the real root of the success.

• 55:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 55:30Billy Corgan?

  This sort of trust, just trust that they had of like coming from the same world.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  That's what Minneapolis was. I mean, there was a north side and a south side of Minneapolis. And everybody intermingled and a lot of times people even will rehearse like in the same community center.

• 55:46Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 55:47Speaker 00

  You know, so you, we all knew each other. And I think that was an important, uh.

• 55:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 55:53Speaker 00

  A important aspect of it.

• 55:54Billy Corgan?

  So you can do the quick version if you want, but the famous story is you're in Atlanta, there's a blizzard.

• 56:00Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 56:00Billy Corgan?

  And you don't get back and he fires you, something like that. But if you want to give me the sort of the.

• 56:04Speaker 00

  That's the shortest story, that's the short, the short way to do it. So we were in New York, Clarence Avon who owned Taboo Records.

• 56:11Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 56:12Speaker 00

  Uh, we had done a song called High Hopes for the SOS Band. We didn't produce it, like a guy named Leon Silvers III produced it. And Leon Silvers III is one of the people that when I think about the short list of people that really, really, you know, along with Prince, obviously are responsible for us being here, Leon Silvers III would be one of them. John McClane would be another one, who was the A and R person at A and M Records that connected us with Janet. Um, but these people were so instrumental in our lives and Clarence Avon. So Clarence Avon said, produce some songs on SOS Band. You know, you didn't produce the one that Leon did, but produce your own songs. Okay, great. We go, we'd get four days off in New York. We say, let's go to Atlanta and do it while we got the four days off. We go down to Atlanta, we go record, everything's great.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  We drive into the airport, it starts snowing. But now.

• 57:00Billy Corgan?

  Which is not a normal thing down there.

• 57:01Speaker 00

  It's not a normal thing and one that they don't deal with very well. Like for us, it would be what we would call a dusting of snow. Like literally you take a broom and sweep it, you wouldn't even need a shovel.

• 57:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, they don't even have snowplows.

• 57:13Speaker 00

  They don't have snowplows down there. So the whole airport shut down. And anybody, I don't know, anybody's been to the Atlanta airport, but I'm telling you, it's terminal after terminal. You get on a train to get to another terminal. We were trying to book ourselves, cause this is pre GPS, pre internet. So it wasn't like we could go, well, what airports open? Or let's go get the rental car back and drive to an airport that's open or let.

• 57:34Billy Corgan?

  I see, I see.

• 57:34Speaker 00

  We couldn't do any of that. So we're just booking ourselves on any plane leaving. We're like, whatever the first plane is to anywhere.

• 57:41Billy Corgan?

  Take me anywhere, yeah.

• 57:42Speaker 00

  Take me anywhere to get out of this and then we'll try to get to San Antonio was, was where we were trying to get to. Anyway, eventually we realized we weren't gonna get there. By the time we got there, they did the gig without us. Um, Jerome stood where Terry normally stands, Jerome is Terry's brother. He stood where he normally stands. Um, Prince knew all the keyboard parts and stuff, he played backstage. I think, uh, no, actually might, no, Prince played, actually I think Prince played bass. Prince played bass backstage.

• 58:09Billy Corgan?

  That's amazing.

• 58:09Speaker 00

  And then.

• 58:10Billy Corgan?

  Just that alone is so crazy, right?

• 58:12Speaker 00

  It was, it was nuts. And then I think either Matt or Lisa probably did the keyboard parts that I'm, were missing for me. Anyway, the show I guess went great, cause I, when I, we finally landed late and I went to a club and everybody's like, yeah, y'all, we're great, y'all, we're great.

• 58:25Billy Corgan?

  You're like, great, we're good.

• 58:26Speaker 00

  So weird, so weird. Anyway, he fined us. He said, that's what you get that for going down and seeing those girls. He thought we had gone down to see some girls. Then a picture in Billboard shows up with us and the SOS Band together in the studio. And we're trying to hide the Billboard magazine. Like he's going, where's my Billboard magazine? And we're like trying to hide it, right? Anyway, of course he eventually sees it. So the same day we're going to now, uh, mix the SOS Band at a studio called Larrabee Studio. Prince calls that morning and he says, meet me at Sunset Sound at five o'clock or whatever. I'm like, okay. So we go to Sunset Sound.

• 59:02Billy Corgan?

  Is this, is, sorry.

• 59:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:03Billy Corgan?

  Cause I, I know some of these stories. Is this where he had the bed in the studio? Remember that?

• 59:09Speaker 00

  I do, I do.

• 59:10Billy Corgan?

  He had a bed in the studio.

• 59:12Speaker 00

  Although I didn't say that, it wasn't there that day. If he, if he had one, if he had one, it wasn't there that day.

• 59:18Billy Corgan?

  Cause if you work in studios like we do, you know, you hear all these great legendary Prince stories. And one of them was like, yeah, he, cause I recorded there and they were like, oh, this is where he had the bed.

• 59:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 59:27Billy Corgan?

  You know?

• 59:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, there was no bed, at least, at least not that we saw that day. But, uh.

• 59:32Billy Corgan?

  Well, it was a big day for you.

• 59:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So we, anyway, so we walk in, we said, it's funny, cause the accountant was there. And I thought, when we saw the accountant, we thought, oh, we're fired, he's gonna give us our last checks, right? But he just walks out and goes, hey, have a good session. So, okay, cool. We walk into a room. Basically it's about, there's a table. Basically I would be, it would be me, Terry, Prince would be where the table there is, and then Morris and Jesse, where you're at. And Prince just goes,

• 1:00:05Speaker 00

  I told you guys not to produce other groups. And we said, yeah. And he said, and you produced the SOS Band? And we said, yes. And he said, so you're fired.

• 1:00:16Speaker 00

  I was like, okay. And I got up and walked out. Terry tried to reason with him a little bit. Terry walks out. Say, what do you want to do? So we might as well go over to Larrabee and mix this SOS. Right? We walk in, the engineer is a guy named Steve Hodge. We had never met Steve Hodge in our life, but we knew he mixed all the Leon Silvers, the third records. And we knew just from liner notes, he was at Larrabee Sound, which is why we called, so that's why we called Larry. Can we get Steve Hodge?

• 1:00:47Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:48Speaker 00

  So we walk in the room and he goes, hey, nice to meet you guys. He said, we said, nice to meet you, Steve. He said, what's wrong? We said, oh, we just got fired from the time. He said, oh, man, that's messed up. He said, well, so I don't think you got anything to worry about because this song y'all got here, this is a smash. And he hits play and just be good to me by the SOS band, the Steve Hodge mix comes out these big speakers just blasting. And we were like, oh, okay, okay. And we didn't realize until later that Steve knew who we were because he had mixed the High Hopes record, which Leon produced.

• 1:01:27Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  And he said, he had asked Leon, who did this record? And he said, these guys from Minneapolis, Jimmy and Terry.

• 1:01:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:33Speaker 00

  And Terry and Steve said he made a mental note.

• 1:01:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Speaker 00

  He said, those guys are going to be something because he had mixed a ton of records for a lot of people. So he said, when we had to go do the Prince thing first, he said he was happy because it gave him more time to get the mix together. But he said, I'm going to blow these guys away with this mix. We didn't learn this until maybe a couple of years ago. We were talking to Steve about it. And he told us the story from his perspective. So, yeah, it was, it was, it was magic, magic.

• 1:02:01Billy Corgan?

  But so it's such a funny how life is, right? I mean, you're, you're literally in this kind of kingdom, for lack of a better word.

• 1:02:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:02:10Billy Corgan?

  With the hottest artist on the planet.

• 1:02:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:02:13Billy Corgan?

  You get kicked like right out the door.

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:02:16Billy Corgan?

  And by the way, somebody you've known since you were a kid.

• 1:02:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Billy Corgan?

  So there's a real relationship there. You weren't just some guys.

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:02:22Billy Corgan?

  And you're like, what are we going to do? And, and literally it sets your life into motion in a way.

• 1:02:28Billy Corgan?

  I can't say it did you a favor, but it's sort of, it, it was meant to be probably.

• 1:02:32Speaker 00

  Terry, Terry always phrases it as he didn't fire us, he freed us. He, he knew, because part of it was the control. He knew at a certain point, he couldn't really control us.

• 1:02:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  And he knew from Terry, now Terry, back in the day, my partner was very much the leader of any band that he was in, including the time. Like if you, if some, if somebody would ask Morris a question, hey, Morris, what do you think about it? He'd go, T, what'd you think? He would always go to, he'd always defer to Terry because Terry was always the leader of stuff. That was always his thing. So Prince was like that and Prince and him would have great conversations and Prince would always call him Terry Lewis. It was always both names. But Prince would, you know, Terry, he was, Prince would say something and Terry would go, Prince, you know that's more, whatever, whatever, and whatever. And they, that relationship was great. They had a great relationship because Terry was just so honest with him. So, yeah.

• 1:03:24Billy Corgan?

  Um,

• 1:03:26Billy Corgan?

  I went back and listened to some of your earliest, uh, okay, now that you're out of this situation, like now you're, this is your gig, you're going to be producers and writers and,

• 1:03:34Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:03:34Billy Corgan?

  And I, I listened to the Cheryl, uh, Cheryl Lynn record.

• 1:03:38Speaker 00

  Encore.

• 1:03:39Billy Corgan?

  Which kind of your first kind of, is it fair to say it's kind of your first kind of success record on your own?

• 1:03:46Speaker 00

  Well, SOS Band was probably the big success because what happened was we were very, and once again, to take a page from Prince's book, we were very cognizant of the way that record sounded.

• 1:03:59Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:03:59Speaker 00

  Eight oh eight drum machine as the base of it, uh, the, the, the kind of keyboards we used and all that kind of stuff. So when record companies, of course, you know, once you have a hit, record companies come at you and they say, give me another one like that.

• 1:04:12Billy Corgan?

  More of that one.

• 1:04:13Speaker 00

  And we were like, no, no, no, we're going to do something totally different. So Cheryl Lynn was interesting because Cheryl Lynn, we had, she had actually, we were on a show with her back in the time days. And we had let her use our equipment because, um, her equipment got lost or something.

• 1:04:29Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:29Speaker 00

  So we let her use our equipment. And I don't know that she maybe remembered that or whatever. But when she was looking for, you know, Columbia was looking for some record to get, you know, a single for her album. And I think she might've said, hey, these guys were nice to me. I'll give them a shot. Cause we really weren't like known or anything.

• 1:04:47Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  And so we said, okay, we're going to do this song. So we did Encore. Well, we went to a DMX drum machine. We went to Terry playing the bass on, along with the synthesizer bass, kind of in combination. We went for a whole different sound, a whole different thing. And that record went number one.

• 1:05:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04Speaker 00

  And what it did was it proved that we could vary our sound, but still the records could work.

• 1:05:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Speaker 00

  And I remember all the records we did after that, we'd, I think we did Thelma Houston. After that, we did, uh, I want to say, uh, Alexander O'Neal, we did all these records, but we always varied the sounds of it.

• 1:05:23Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 1:05:23Speaker 00

  And it wasn't until we did the SOS Band follow up, that we pulled the eight oh eight back out again.

• 1:05:28Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 1:05:29Speaker 00

  And then, so it was, so part of it was kind of, I could tell people now, it's kind of planned longevity. Because it was, we didn't want people to get sick of one sound.

• 1:05:39Billy Corgan?

  I see.

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  And we always wanted to make the artist their own, where people would go, oh, that's their record made specifically for them.

• 1:05:47Billy Corgan?

  But if I could pay a compliment, um, my first reaction in listening, because I, I wasn't familiar with some of these early records when you guys were on your own. Like that record, the Cheryl record. And, and my first thought was like, oh my God, this is like the sound of the next decade.

• 1:06:04Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:04Billy Corgan?

  You guys found whatever, I'm not saying that record alone.

• 1:06:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:08Billy Corgan?

  Whatever you guys had on your own.

• 1:06:10Speaker 00

  Well, the Cheryl Lynn record or the Sherelle record?

• 1:06:13Speaker 00

  So the Cheryl Lynn record was Encore.

• 1:06:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. But what I'm saying is,

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

  But then the Sherelle record was, didn't mean to turn you on.

• 1:06:19Billy Corgan?

  Okay, right, right.

• 1:06:20Speaker 00

  Which I think,

• 1:06:21Billy Corgan?

  Well, duh.

• 1:06:22Speaker 00

  Well, when you, no, but when you talk about that.

• 1:06:23Billy Corgan?

  But what I'm saying is, but I'm just saying, it's just something, because I, you know, uh, like a lot of MTV kids, you know, you heard whatever was coming at you this way.

• 1:06:30Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:06:31Billy Corgan?

  And my first reaction, hearing like that record was like, oh my God, this is the next decade of hits.

• 1:06:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:37Billy Corgan?

  Like, like,

• 1:06:38Speaker 00

  No, I understand.

• 1:06:39Billy Corgan?

  By the way, you're, you're not, you're not household names. You're not in, you're not in videos, you're not on MTV. Right. You're, you're just some guys.

• 1:06:45Speaker 00

  We're just some guys.

• 1:06:46Billy Corgan?

  So, and then the other thing I would pay you a compliment on is, is, uh, most people, at least this is me being a musician, most people would on some level be conscious of like, well, if we kind of got the Prince rep, people are going to kind of be looking from that. But you, but there's no Prince, I mean, I'm saying there's nothing, but I'm saying is, it's not like you guys are trying to be, we're kind of from the Prince world.

• 1:07:11Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:07:12Billy Corgan?

  You, you guys are doing your own thing, your own way. So a lot of respect for that because you must've had some internal confidence that what you had was invaluable because most people would be trying to almost like cheat it across the line, like, you know, hey, we're from this world and,

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:07:26Billy Corgan?

  You know, you know, you've, you've met those people like, I'm really the guy, you know, doesn't Prince do it? No, I was really me, you know, those type of people.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:07:33Billy Corgan?

  So, so you guys somehow, when you broke off, you broke off.

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  No, we, and it was interesting because we, first of all, we didn't feel like people could make Prince records better than he made them. So it was kind of like, we don't even really want to do that.

• 1:07:47Billy Corgan?

  But I'm saying that can only come from a place of security.

• 1:07:51Speaker 00

  Well, and that helps that it was two of us.

• 1:07:53Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:07:53Speaker 00

  Cause if it would have just been me by myself, I'm, who knows? But I, but I think,

• 1:07:58Billy Corgan?

  I don't think I would add that confidence is kind of what I'm trying to say.

• 1:08:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, I, I, I think we were, I think it was confidence, but it was also, I will say probably some ignorance too. We didn't know what we couldn't do. We, we knew, we knew what everybody else was doing, but even in, um, you know, even in the studio. So like when we'd be in a studio, I remember, uh, you know, it was all Studer machines. It was all SSL or Neve soundboard.

• 1:08:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:24Speaker 00

  We decided we wanted to create our own studio. And because we said, if we have our own place, we can just go 24 hours a day and we can just make music and we don't have to pay hourly and we don't have to do that. But also we wanted to live in Minneapolis because we felt like out here,

• 1:08:40Speaker 00

  Clarence Avon gave us great advice. He said, when you're driving, don't look at the Hollywood sign or you're going to crash. And that was the metaphor of,

• 1:08:48Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. So we said, we're going to go back to Minneapolis and we lucked out because when we went, we tried to get financing, right, to build our studio. And all of the banks said collateral this and loan this and whatever, whatever. And the guy that owns the Minnesota Twins was a Polad family, but a guy named Carl Polad, who owned the Twins. We went to visit him. And he said, what do you guys, what do you guys want to do? And then we said, we want to build our own studio to make music. And he says, what do you have? And I said, well, we don't have anything collateral wise or, you know, but here's a billboard chart. See these songs on the billboard chart? These are our songs and see our names here? Like, we're going to get paid for all these songs. And whatever. And that's kind of what we said.

• 1:09:28Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:09:29Speaker 00

  And he said, okay, cool. What's next? And we said, what do you mean, what's next? He said, what else do you want to do? Anyway, he ended up financing our studio, our very first studio. And we actually, the year that we won our Grammy, our first Grammy was 1987. That was the same year that the Minnesota Twins won the World Series.

• 1:09:48Billy Corgan?

  Kirby Puckett.

• 1:09:48Speaker 00

  And we were Kirby Puckett and we were guests of his at the World Series at game seven. And we made a poster and it said, the right mix makes a winner. And it was a picture of the Grammy and a picture of the baseball World Series trophy.

• 1:10:01Billy Corgan?

  That's such a cool story.

• 1:10:02Speaker 00

  And yeah, and to this day, that family has, you know, been very cool to us. He used to own, I think, US Bank or one of the big banks back in the day. And so, yeah, I mean, that was, so even, I mean, I'm telling you, it was such storybook stuff that when I talk about it, it just seems weird.

• 1:10:17Billy Corgan?

  But it's beautiful because that's a sort of God working in mysterious ways.

• 1:10:21Speaker 00

  It is God's alignment, absolutely.

• 1:10:23Billy Corgan?

  One unfortunate, uh, thing, I mean, you tell me, but like, you know, as a kid growing up in Chicago, Purple Rain was like, that was the movie of the year.

• 1:10:32Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:32Billy Corgan?

  And when you guys got booted, you weren't in the movie.

• 1:10:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, we were in the movie, yeah.

• 1:10:36Billy Corgan?

  But they're your boys in the movie, right?

• 1:10:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:38Billy Corgan?

  So how'd you feel about the movie when the movie came out?

• 1:10:40Speaker 00

  So what was interesting, I'll, I'll go back just a little bit earlier in the story. There was a point in time after Prince fired us that he called, or he actually had Jelly Bean call, because Jelly Bean's known Terry, had known Jelly Bean, he had known Terry as long as I had, probably longer than I had. And I remember we were at our house in, uh, LA, we had our little house now at this point. And, uh, he calls, Jelly Bean calls Terry and Jelly Bean goes, hey, man, we're going to do this movie. And it's going to be real cool. And, you know, he wants you to come back. And he's explaining the whole concept of the movie and everything they're going to do. And Terry goes, cool.

• 1:11:23Speaker 00

  Okay. Yeah. We, we're down, we're down. And he goes, what about Jimmy? And he said, he doesn't want Jimmy back. And Terry goes, you tell that little mother, like he's like yelling. And I'm like, Terry, I said, no, no, I'll wait, I'll wait. Go do the movie, go do the movie. He said, no, no. That was it.

• 1:11:42Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:11:43Speaker 00

  So that was another, when I think about moments that solidified Terry and me, that was one of them.

• 1:11:48Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:11:48Speaker 00

  It was like, no, there's no divide and conquer here. Like, it's like, you know, so we were happy about the movie. We were glad the guys were in it. And I, I, I don't know how, well, remind me that there's a whole story about the guy that replaced me in the time. Had a significant, uh, part of my life, probably three or four years ago.

• 1:12:14Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:12:15Speaker 00

  If we, if we get that far. But I just, I just want to make that, make that note. But anyway, no, we were happy about the guys in the time and we knew, we knew all the replacement guys.

• 1:12:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:25Speaker 00

  You know, we knew who they were. Once again, neighborhood guys.

• 1:12:27Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  A little younger than us, but we knew them. And we went to, um, I think it was Detroit. We went to, to see him, either in Chicago or Detroit, wherever the Purple Rain tour. Went, we, you know, opened, we went to it to support.

• 1:12:40Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:41Speaker 00

  And also Terry's brother Jerome.

• 1:12:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:43Speaker 00

  Was still a big part of it too. So.

• 1:12:45Billy Corgan?

  I mean, he was a, now he's an MTV star.

• 1:12:47Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:12:48Billy Corgan?

  Like legit star.

• 1:12:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:12:50Billy Corgan?

  Um, I meant to ask you, uh, because you've had such success as a writer and producer.

• 1:12:58Billy Corgan?

  Not that there's a formula for anything, because people ask me these questions too, but are you, by and large, were you a track first? Person or write the song, like sit there on a keyboard and write the changes out and then produce it? What was your general work modality?

• 1:13:14Speaker 00

  So it changed, it kind of evolved. Um, I think probably early on, it was beat first.

• 1:13:26Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:13:26Speaker 00

  Um, particularly like Control, if you think about the Control album. So many of those beats were done kind of simultaneously, but it would always be, I'd program a beat on the drum machine and then I play on top of it.

• 1:13:39Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:13:40Speaker 00

  So that was the way, the thinking.

• 1:13:41Billy Corgan?

  Is it, is the tracks gotta be kind of hot to at least lean in?

• 1:13:45Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah. The, the drums would almost inform in a way, what then the chords and the structure was going to be or the sounds.

• 1:13:52Billy Corgan?

  Because there's, not that you were an electronic fan per se, but there's such a kind of a, an embrace of technology.

• 1:13:59Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. No, we, we never, and, and Terry is, is really, was always very forward thinking about technology. But I remember as a drummer, when drum machines came out, I remember a lot of drummers were like, oh man, it's going to put us out of business. And I was like, put you out of business? No, I'm, I'm going to learn this. I should be able to work this better than anybody. Cause I already had the concept of what rhythm is.

• 1:14:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:21Speaker 00

  And, um, I just remember that was kind of the thing. And I, so there were people that were afraid of technology, whatever it was. You know, whether it was synthesizers, whether it was sampling, whatever, I just kind of embraced everything. I just kind of thought, man, any tool that's going to make it, give me another tool to make a song.

• 1:14:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Speaker 00

  I just thought it, it's really cool. I remember, uh, Prince's story. Um, when we did, uh, Rhythm Nation, Prince was the biggest Sly and the Family Stone fan in the world. And I remember he came over to our studio, I think we were doing a grand opening type of thing. And I think he came over kind of around that time. And we just said, hey, Prince, this is the new Janet record. And we put that record on and he literally, he went, oh man, and went, he just ran out the room. Cause I think it blew his mind because I think as, he was such a pure musician that I think the idea of sampling to him was like, not kosher necessarily.

• 1:15:15Billy Corgan?

  I see, yeah.

• 1:15:16Speaker 00

  And all of a sudden he was like, oh my God, he heard it in a whole different way.

• 1:15:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:21Speaker 00

  And, um, and, and if you notice on the records after that, he started trying to sample stuff.

• 1:15:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:26Speaker 00

  Not, not with the greatest of success, but I think it kind of changed his way of thinking. But we always were looking forward, um, just to whatever that next thing was.

• 1:15:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:38Speaker 00

  And I think in the evolution of R and B, I think it was interesting too, that Terry and I met the same year that hip hop kind of began. Um, cause we kind of celebrated our 50 year anniversary together. And it was like, one of those things where the idea of drum machines and sampling and all of that with R and B music, with pop music all together.

• 1:16:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:03Speaker 00

  That was the thing that I think sonically appealed to people. And particularly, uh, we were talking about Alexander O'Neal, like overseas, like in the UK. He was bigger than he was ever in the US, but it was something about the way his R and B voice resonated against the, you know, the major seventh chords and the bells and all of the different kind of.

• 1:16:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:24Speaker 00

  Pretty top things. There was something about that chemistry that just seemed to work really, really well.

• 1:16:29Billy Corgan?

  Um, speaking of Janet, I mean, my memory of that time, because I was definitely watching a lot of MTV then was just like, she was just massive and that album was just, it was like, how can I put it? It was hard to hate on Janet because the music was great, the songs were great, the production was fresh. You guys were just killing it. It's one of those moments where you, as you know, because you've had it, like it just, it just clicks like, and there it was.

• 1:16:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:56Billy Corgan?

  So I meant to, I meant to ask you because you know, um, I try at least come at some of these things from a slightly different angle.

• 1:17:07Billy Corgan?

  And it's hard sometimes when you're talking about the Jackson family, because there's so much mythology and there's the movies and the thing. And.

• 1:17:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:13Billy Corgan?

  Obviously she'd been a child star on TV.

• 1:17:15Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:17:16Billy Corgan?

  So if you could, just talk to me about Janet, the musician, because I at least give myself some credit. And maybe my father was a musician, uh, he was always the white guy in, in the black band. And my father at home only listened to R and B.

• 1:17:30Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:31Billy Corgan?

  And one quick thing on Prince is, I remember when Prince's first album came out, I had it and I was playing it. And, uh, and my father said, you know, what's this? And I told, told him the story a little bit. And my father hated everything.

• 1:17:48Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:17:49Billy Corgan?

  And Prince was obviously coming at it from a different angle. It wasn't just straight R and B, right?

• 1:17:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:17:54Billy Corgan?

  And my father was like, he was like, oh, I get this. Like he got it. So that was cool for me because it was like, oh, my father actually likes something I like for my own reasons. I liked that Prince was coming at more from a rock and roll.

• 1:18:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:18:06Billy Corgan?

  Perspective leaning in R and B as somebody who grew up in R and B in the house.

• 1:18:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:18:10Billy Corgan?

  I got it, but I was like, oh, he's sitting through this kind of interesting crossover thing.

• 1:18:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:18:14Billy Corgan?

  But my dad heard the, the R and B foundation and he was like, oh, this is the real deal. So he was a Prince fan from the get.

• 1:18:22Speaker 00

  And I love that. I also love that when you have, I mean, I think, you know, our parents had their music. You had your music.

• 1:18:30Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:30Speaker 00

  But there was always a few artists that you both agreed on.

• 1:18:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:34Speaker 00

  And, and like you said, listening for different reasons, attracted to it for different reasons.

• 1:18:38Billy Corgan?

  So if you could.

• 1:18:39Speaker 00

  There's something that's cool about it.

• 1:18:40Billy Corgan?

  Thank you. So if you can indulge me, like, just talk about Janet, the musician, because I, I, I guess I was giving myself a compliment. It's like, as much as I was sort of annoyed by pop music at the time, because I was from, I was coming from the generation as a father, where we wanted to kill everybody and get rid of everything, right?

• 1:18:58Billy Corgan?

  And part of it was watching MTV and all that pop music. I think it sort of irritated my generation, which kind of might explain why we brought out guitars and.

• 1:19:05Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 1:19:07Billy Corgan?

  But, uh, I could never hate on Janet because I was just like, there's so much going on here. And I was so in awe that another member of the Jackson family had her own deal, her own style. She wasn't trying to be brother junior, sister junior, that she had her own thing.

• 1:19:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:19:24Billy Corgan?

  So if you could, just indulge me, talk about Janet, the musician.

• 1:19:27Speaker 00

  Well, the thing with Janet for us was, um, and I'll mention the name John McClane one more time. We were supposed to work with another artist on A and M, um, who didn't want to work with us for whatever reason. And so he said, man, he said, I'm really sorry. Is there anybody else on the label you'd like to work with? And we said, send the roster. And so this was a fax machine. He faxes, he faxes a roster and we both stopped at Janet. And he said, okay, you want to do a couple of songs? We said, no, we want to do the whole album. He was like, you do? And we said, yeah. So this would have been her third album. She had already made two albums before.

• 1:20:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:01Speaker 00

  Uh, with good, good producers, good albums, but the thing that was missing was, when you talked about it, she was a TV star. She was, and, and, and whenever you saw her on TV with the brothers, she was always had all this feisty attitude. But none of that was coming across in the music. So our whole thing was, let's bring that attitude out of her. And so we made super aggressive tracks, almost at the time, if you think about the other, I don't know, Patti LaBelle had a record out. Nita Baker had a record out. There were all these records that were soft R and B records.

• 1:20:36Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:37Speaker 00

  And we thought for a female, let's make the most aggressive, loud records we can make, even though she had a soft voice. We knew if she could sing it with the attitude, then we would have that combination. And that was sort of the, that was sort of the goal in those records. And, um, I remember her dad, her dad said to us, don't have my daughter sounding like Prince.

• 1:21:01Speaker 00

  We said, okay, all right.

• 1:21:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:03Speaker 00

  But that was the thing. We wanted to be aggressive with it. And Janet had such a wide musical palette between growing up, watching her brothers do what they did, but also falling in love with musicals and really liking all music across the board. She liked, she loved the Beatles. She loved.

• 1:21:20Billy Corgan?

  She's.

• 1:21:20Speaker 00

  Fleetwood Mac.

• 1:21:21Billy Corgan?

  She's truly a crossover artist.

• 1:21:23Speaker 00

  Yes. She loved everything. So whenever we would bring something to the table, whether it was funky and, or if it was rock edged, or if it was whatever, she was comfortable with all of it.

• 1:21:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:35Speaker 00

  And she, we got a trust, I think on the song nasty, when we did nasty, I remember she started singing it in her, you know, sitting in a movie show. We said, no, no, no, sing it. She had a cold like the couple of days before, and she was singing everything like this. And we said, sing it like when you had a cold. And she's like, sitting in the movie show. And we said, yeah, that's it with all this, with all this attitude. And then when she would hear the comp, after we comped the vocals together, then she would go, oh, I get it. I get what we're doing. And also she was excited about. She had always been given records. She wasn't part of the creative process. And we told her, she kept saying, when are we going to start working? Cause we just hung out for like four or five days without going in the studio. She said, when are we going to start?

• 1:22:19Speaker 00

  We said, we started, we showed her the opening lyrics to Control. When I was 17, I did what people told me, did what my father said and let my mother mold me. She looked at the lyrics and she said, oh, wait, this is what we've been talking about. We said, yeah. And she said, so we're going to write about whatever we talk about? Yes. She, oh, I want to talk about this and I want to talk about. It was like the light bulb went on in her head. And that's when I think she fell in love with the idea of being an artist. Because before that, I think it was her dad's idea.

• 1:22:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:45Speaker 00

  That she was an artist, like you got a good voice, go make a record. So this was the first record. And the other little thing I'll say is Minneapolis was the perfect environment to make that record. Because she's talking about going out on her own. Well, the going out on her own was no limos, no bodyguards, a Thomas guide. Here's your hotel, here's a Chevy blazer to drive. Um, here's how you get to the studio from the hotel. Here's the blockbuster video, if you want to go there, whatever. She had to grow up, literally as we were making the record.

• 1:23:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:20Speaker 00

  And I just think that that environment, but everybody was so friendly to her and it was such a, you know, Minnesota's a very friendly place. So it worked out perfectly in her kind of growth that was happening.

• 1:23:33Billy Corgan?

  I got to imagine, once you achieved that kind of, I mean, truly global success. I mean, the phones got to be ringing like crazy.

• 1:23:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:43Billy Corgan?

  And I'm not asking you to name names, but there's got to be those moments where it's like, some of your heroes are calling, some people you're like, I can't, and you're thinking like, nah, I just don't want to get into that. Cause I had some of that too, where people would call me and be like, oh my God, they want to make a record with me because I'm hot right now.

• 1:23:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:23:58Billy Corgan?

  I don't want to get in and all that. That's an interesting spot to be in where now like, everybody wants to, you know, you literally go from living in, on cots.

• 1:24:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:24:07Billy Corgan?

  To now the phones like.

• 1:24:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, lighting up. Um, so for us, we got some really good advice from the Black Godfather Clarence Avant. After Control hit really big,

• 1:24:23Speaker 00

  he said, you guys need to take three weeks off. No, no, I'm sorry. He said, you guys need to take two weeks off. We said, what are you talking about Clarence?

• 1:24:33Billy Corgan?

  He said, you guys. Take any time off.

• 1:24:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, you need, yeah, we can't take time off. We, you know, we're, we're hot here, we're, we're. He said, no. And, um, I, I, you know, I take that back. It wasn't right after Control. The next, the record we did after Control was Human League, Human. Okay.

• 1:24:50Billy Corgan?

  Which by the way is, I didn't, I have to admit, I did not know that you guys did that record. What a great record.

• 1:24:55Speaker 00

  And so John McClane, he said, uh, what happened with, with that was John called us. He said, hey, do you like the Human League? And we said, yeah. And he says, okay. He said, so they sent me some demos that they're working on. And I said, what are y'all trying to do with these demos? And he said, oh, we're trying to do like a Jam and Lewis record. And he said, well, why don't you just get Jam and Lewis to do the record? And that's how that record into the.

• 1:25:19Billy Corgan?

  Wow, that's so beautiful.

• 1:25:20Speaker 00

  So when we, so anyway, when we won, we won producer of the year, we did all that stuff happened. And that's when Clarence said, you guys need to take two weeks off. And we're like, oh no, we're, you know, he said, no, you take two weeks off. And this is before the days of, you know, cell phones and, and, you know, social media and all that stuff. So taking two weeks off was like, hey, what do you want to do today, man? Cause we can't go to the studio, right? Oh, might as well go see a movie, might as well go, whatever, whatever. I remember when the two weeks were up, we called Clarence and we said, can we get another week? He said, yes. And it was great. And then we were able to re-enter with a project that there wasn't any pressure, but there was a lot of satisfaction. And that was Herb Alpert.

• 1:26:02Billy Corgan?

  Ah.

• 1:26:03Speaker 00

  We did the Herb.

• 1:26:03Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know that.

• 1:26:04Speaker 00

  Yes, we did the Herb Alpert album and John, cause John McClane, once again, called us. He said, hey, Herb's putting a, a new record together. He said, I thought that would be a great record for you guys. There's no pressure, there's no commercial pressure here.

• 1:26:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I mean, you're not thinking you're going to have a hit.

• 1:26:18Speaker 00

  Right, we're not, yeah, you're not, you don't have to think about a hit, but it'd be cool. He just wants to do some songs with you guys. Great. We end up doing this, we end up doing this album with him. Ended up being his first gold album in I don't know how long, well, since I guess Rise was the one before that. And, um, and we got Janet to sing on a couple of the songs and he ended up with a couple of top 10 hits and a huge record. And, um, but that was the way we kind of eased back into it after the phones were ringing. But like you said, not everything was for us. I remember Lionel Richie called, we love Lionel Richie. And Lionel called and he said, but what happened was people would call and they'd go, I need a single, like they'd have a whole album done.

• 1:27:02Billy Corgan?

  And you're like, oh, I got one right here.

• 1:27:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, they need a single. We never did that. We always would always, we would always write for the people that we knew we were going to work with. We didn't really have stuff stashed away. And we said to Lionel, I said, no, I said, Lionel, when you need like, two or three songs for something, for a project, then we'll, we'd love to work with you. And eventually we did, and we did like two or three songs and it, and it was great. But that was kind of the thing. It was like, and we also were very good at pointing people in another direction or, or guiding them a different way. Well, there was Clive Davis called us to New York. He wanted us to do work with, um, Aretha Franklin. And I remember, you know, he's talked about everything that they were going to do and, you know, that.

• 1:27:47Speaker 00

  And we said, who else is working on the record? And he said, um, he named a couple of people, kind of known people. And he said, there's this young gentleman, uh, Narada Michael Walden. And we said, oh, oh, he's the one, he's the one. And he said, well, he's kind of young and untested. And we said, no, no, no, no, he's not untested. He's the one, right? So we walked away, we said, and he wanted us to do demos. Clive always wanted us to do demos and we were like, we don't do demos, Clive. We just, we get in the studio and we just do our thing. So anyway, we didn't do anything on the Aretha Franklin record. But six months later, I remember looking at MTV. I see, uh, I see the Chyron come up, Freeway of Love, Aretha Franklin.

• 1:28:29Billy Corgan?

  Massive comeback.

• 1:28:30Speaker 00

  Right? I look at the video on the drums as Narada Michael Walden and I said, and the next time I saw Narada, he came up to me, he hugged me and he just said, thank you. Cause he knew what had happened. And we've done that, we've done that a few times where we're not the ones to do it. But here's who would be really good.

• 1:28:50Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:28:50Speaker 00

  So that, then we get a lot of satisfaction from that.

• 1:28:53Billy Corgan?

  Here's the esoteric question of the day.

• 1:28:55Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 1:28:56Billy Corgan?

  What was in the Minneapolis water? Because, uh, when I look at your success, obviously Prince's success. It's such an incredible diversity of musical styles. I mean, foundationally, yes, it's this, we'll call it R and B, but, but the influences, everything from psychedelic to, you know, the Philly, I mean, it's such a wide influences styles. I can't think of anything other pop outside of like Motown.

• 1:29:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:30Billy Corgan?

  Or even like England, you know, with Beatles, like, it's amazing that these set of musicians came together at this time and made this amount of music. And there's so much of it.

• 1:29:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, first of all, when you say the, what's in the water in Minneapolis, um, six months out of the year, ice is in the water. You have no distraction of wanting to go outside and do stuff. So I think.

• 1:29:54Billy Corgan?

  I've made the same argument about growing up in Chicago.

• 1:29:56Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:29:57Billy Corgan?

  Because we were stuck inside, a lot of rainy days, Midwest people like ourselves.

• 1:30:01Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:30:01Billy Corgan?

  So you sit there and you just play your guitar.

• 1:30:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:05Billy Corgan?

  You can't go outside.

• 1:30:06Speaker 00

  That's absolutely right.

• 1:30:07Billy Corgan?

  It's raining.

• 1:30:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think, I think that, I think that has a lot to do with it. But also because we were kind of in the middle of nowhere, almost in a sense. All of those influences came our way. There wasn't a, you know, we heard records from New York, we had records from Detroit, we had records from Chicago. We had records from, you know, LA.

• 1:30:27Billy Corgan?

  Memphis.

• 1:30:28Speaker 00

  Memphis, yes. We heard records from everywhere. And then once again, as I talk about, you know, the cover band part of it, we weren't, not only just had to play like cover band songs. Growing up in the Midwest, we had to play according to what we were playing. We could play a, a roller rink one day, a prom one day, a bar mitzvah another day. Um, the Elks lounge another day. Like literally people would come up to us and go, hey, do you know any country and western? And it'd be like, yeah, try to figure out some Johnny Cash or something to play. Or they'd say, hey, you know any Pocas? Yeah, we roll out the barrel, we play some Beer Barrel.

• 1:31:04Billy Corgan?

  Funkiest, funkiest bar mitzvah of all time.

• 1:31:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I mean, you know, you, so, so all of that went into it for sure.

• 1:31:10Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so we're almost done. Thank you for indulging me.

• 1:31:12Speaker 00

  Oh man, this is great, this is awesome.

• 1:31:14Billy Corgan?

  I was surprised, I, I didn't know you had wandered into this world, but at one point you were the chairman of NARIS?

• 1:31:20Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:31:20Billy Corgan?

  That's accurate, right?

• 1:31:21Speaker 00

  That is accurate.

• 1:31:22Billy Corgan?

  That's an interesting set of politics over there. For the people who don't know, that would be the Grammy committee, basically, from the top down.

• 1:31:28Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:31:29Billy Corgan?

  Um, so I thought because of that, um, to ask you about sort of like the coming scrum, although we're here with AI and music rights issues, do you have any perspective on that? This has kind of been a running question I've been asking guests because.

• 1:31:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:42Billy Corgan?

  It's going to affect us all in, in a myriad ways.

• 1:31:45Speaker 00

  It already is affecting us. AI is certainly affecting us in a myriad of ways. Um, the word AI to me is not a bad word. I think that, uh, and I'm sorry, I, I, I call myself the king of the bad analogy. So I'm going to try to, I'm going to try to give an analogy, the way I, the way I look at it. It's like, um, when cars were invented, um, we had dirt roads. And for cars that didn't, it was fine for horse and buggy, but for cars, it didn't work very well. So once you got the cars on the road, then you realized, yeah, these cars are hitting each other, crashing into each other. We might want to put some lanes down.

• 1:32:28Speaker 00

  We might want to put a speed limit on how fast you can go. Uh, we might want to put guardrails on that turn. Uh, we might want to put some seat belts on.

• 1:32:36Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I see where you're going.

• 1:32:37Speaker 00

  Okay. So to me, AI in that sense is cars are great.

• 1:32:44Speaker 00

  But the governance and the safety is what made it actually work well.

• 1:32:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:50Speaker 00

  I think we need the, I think we need to know if something is AI. We need to know that.

• 1:32:55Billy Corgan?

  Have you seen where Spotify has now come out and said they're gonna start labeling?

• 1:32:58Speaker 00

  Yes, which I, which I think that should happen. I mean, to me, if you're living in the information age and you're withholding information, that's not the right thing to do.

• 1:33:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:08Speaker 00

  So I think that we should do, we should make sure that that's in place. I also think permission and compensation are very important. If somebody's taking my image or taking my voice or taking something and just reimagining it on something new, they should have my permission to do that.

• 1:33:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:27Speaker 00

  And I should be compensated for it.

• 1:33:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:29Speaker 00

  So if those things are in those guidelines, if those guardrails and those lanes and those speed limit signs are in place, I think AI can be a beautiful thing, a wonderful thing.

• 1:33:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:39Speaker 00

  If they're not in place, then we're in trouble. And as I tell people, the train has already left the station, just make sure you're not lying on the track.

• 1:33:46Billy Corgan?

  Recently, I emailed with this young artist. And, uh, and the only reason I know is because I saw her posting on Instagram where somebody from overseas had cloned her voice and was uploading songs on her Spotify page as her.

• 1:34:03Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 1:34:04Billy Corgan?

  And then when she protested, nobody did anything. And then when she tried to upload new songs, she was getting blocked for not being her own artist.

• 1:34:16Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:34:16Billy Corgan?

  So she went public and told this story.

• 1:34:18Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:34:19Billy Corgan?

  And by the way, this is a young artist, like in the Appalachians, playing bluegrass music. This is not a pop singer.

• 1:34:25Speaker 00

  Right, yes, yes, yes.

• 1:34:26Billy Corgan?

  This is somebody who's playing like roots music.

• 1:34:28Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:34:29Billy Corgan?

  So, um, I'm with you on, on that and I, I'm particularly, you know,

• 1:34:35Billy Corgan?

  there's been a lot of looking the other way with the technology companies, streaming services.

• 1:34:39Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:34:40Billy Corgan?

  You know, including the channel that this, uh, show is posted on, uh, mostly, where they kind of look the other way because it's been in their best interest to kind of look the other way.

• 1:34:50Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:34:50Billy Corgan?

  And, um, I think we're finally starting to see where they're realizing they gotta be careful because there's gonna be this kind of revolution and the revolution may be, hey, we're just not gonna have our music on your platforms anymore.

• 1:35:00Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:35:01Billy Corgan?

  Because you can't be doing this to us.

• 1:35:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:35:04Billy Corgan?

  This is our gig.

• 1:35:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, the creators are always kind of the last. I remember, well, back when I was chairman of the, uh, the Grammys. I remember we, uh, when, when, uh, Napster was happening and, and the file sharing and all these things were happening. And I remember we tried to kind of go to Hollywood and go, hey, can you guys help us with this or back us on this or can we be united in this? And Hollywood kind of was like, yeah, no, that's, because at that time, files were so tough.

• 1:35:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, you couldn't upload a movie.

• 1:35:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 1:35:34Billy Corgan?

  It only stopped when the movie started getting uploaded.

• 1:35:36Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 1:35:37Billy Corgan?

  Then they were like.

• 1:35:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, oh, my God.

• 1:35:39Billy Corgan?

  Fire.

• 1:35:39Speaker 00

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:35:40Billy Corgan?

  And we were getting our, kicked on file sharing.

• 1:35:42Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly. So I think it's kind of that same thing. I think when it begins to, as you say, when it begins to affect the broadcasters and the people that are actually doing things, when they realize, oh, wait, there's a downside here.

• 1:35:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:53Speaker 00

  That's when we'll all be aligned and hopefully that's, that's happening soon, you know?

• 1:35:58Billy Corgan?

  Um, last thing, because you've had such an interesting place in music for so many years. And I'm sure you get these questions. It might be somebody reaching out through a member of your family. Young artists are really struggling with like, where do they even dive in the pool? And AI is just now added to that sort of stress.

• 1:36:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:36:17Billy Corgan?

  Like, how, if, like, as you know, certain labels won't sign you unless you have a big social media following.

• 1:36:23Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:36:23Billy Corgan?

  Well, how do you get a big social media following? Well, if you're a girl, you do what young ladies can do to gain attention, but it's not necessarily about music.

• 1:36:32Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:36:33Billy Corgan?

  So do you have any, do you get those, ask those questions? I feel like I get asked those questions a lot. Yeah, they, you know, somebody in the family, could be, I have a tea house in the, in, in, in Chicago area. And, you know, it's, seem to be to see me in the, in the place and they'll say, you know, I got a kid. My daughter's 15, my kid's 14. They want a life in music. What would you recommend? And you kind of go like.

• 1:36:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:36:54Billy Corgan?

  I don't, kind of don't even know where to start, so.

• 1:36:56Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:36:56Billy Corgan?

  You want to throw that, I just, if you.

• 1:36:58Speaker 00

  Thanks for giving it to me then.

• 1:36:59Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, but, but, but, but I, but you have such a unique. Because again, you know, you, you, you did it the old fashioned way.

• 1:37:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:37:06Billy Corgan?

  In clubs, learning how to write, learning how to produce. So you've been at every step of the game.

• 1:37:11Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:37:12Billy Corgan?

  So looking what you know now with technology and you've never been shy about using technology to write songs and stuff.

• 1:37:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:37:19Billy Corgan?

  So I think you have such unique perspective because you've, you've, you've been kind of in your own way, Switzerland, which is like, hey, great music is great music and if we gotta make hits, we'll make hits.

• 1:37:28Speaker 00

  Right. Well, that's interesting. Um, I think first of all, it just needs to be the love of music. I think that's the thing that, you know, a lot of times when I was talking earlier about, you know, Taryn and I going to LA to make our songs and do our demos and all of that, we weren't making any money and we weren't, but we never did it for the money. It, that never had anything to do with it. I mean, we did want to make a living, but that was, that was never the motivation. The motivation was we felt we wanted to make music and we were gonna figure out whatever best way we could do that. I'm also a big advocate of, um, just knowledge. I just think that, um, so much of, um, so much of it is intentional, meaning that,

• 1:38:11Speaker 00

  so if somebody comes up to me and they say, hey, my daughter sings. And I'll go, okay, great. Does she write? Does she produce? Does she do videos? Does she, what else does she do? Like, because it's, that's great that she sings. Or does she just sing?

• 1:38:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:26Speaker 00

  Because if she just sings, then you know you need to align with people that write, people that produce.

• 1:38:32Billy Corgan?

  And by the way, good people that aren't gonna take advantage.

• 1:38:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, you, right. I mean, you hope, that's the thing, you, you never know what that's gonna be. But you hopefully, to me, it's still a collaborative thing. So I think that's to me important to kind of know. But I'll tell people, I love social media because the way I treat social media is, a lot of people will follow people they don't like, so they can talk about them. I don't have time for the negative energy. I just, I just want to put all my energy into positive stuff. And so, um, I wake up every day and I try to discover an artist of some sort. And normally I do, I normally do. If I hear something I like, I'll DM them and I'll just go, hey, I love this, this sounds great.

• 1:39:12Billy Corgan?

  That's a nice message to get from you.

• 1:39:14Speaker 00

  Sometimes, sometimes they don't realize it's me.

• 1:39:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:17Speaker 00

  But, um, but, but sometimes they will. And, and we've collaborated, I'll tell you, one, a great collaboration that happened was I, uh, DM'd, uh, Inflow from Salt, the collective in the UK. I DM'd him about three years ago and I just said, I love all the records you're making. I love what you do. And he came to town, uh, he was working at A and M or, or, well, I guess it's back to A and M now or whatever.

• 1:39:41Billy Corgan?

  It's Chaplain.

• 1:39:41Speaker 00

  Yes, Chaplain, Chaplain now, yes. So he was working over there and he hit me and I went over there and we had like a six hour conversation. I ended up working with him for like a month and a half on, you know, Michael Kewanuka, Cleo, Soul, Salt, all these records. And it was all because I DM'd him and just said, I love what you're doing. So I do think that there's, you know, we live in that age where you can reach out to people, you can do that. And I think that that works really well. A lot of great relationships that I have is simply because I've told people, hey, I enjoy what you're doing. You know, come, come me in as a fan. And, um, I just think that that's a big part of it, but also knowing the people around the people.

• 1:40:23Speaker 00

  Like, it's one thing to know the artist, like if you like a certain artist.

• 1:40:27Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:28Speaker 00

  Who's their producer? Who's their engineer? Who's their right, who's writes songs? Who's their A and R? Who's, like, know the people around them? And then if, as a fan of theirs, what's the song they should be doing that they're missing? Like, man, I got the song, whatever that song is. You know what I'm saying? Like, if I'm looking at somebody and I go, as a fan of yours, here's what I would want you to do.

• 1:40:53Billy Corgan?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:40:53Speaker 00

  And then write that song for them and, and be that missing piece where maybe they don't even think they're missing a piece.

• 1:40:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:59Speaker 00

  But they hear that song and they go, oh, man, yeah, I could hear myself on that. That might be cool, you know?

• 1:41:04Billy Corgan?

  Thank you, sir.

• 1:41:05Speaker 00

  Man, thank you.

• 1:41:06Billy Corgan?

  Appreciate it.

• 1:41:06Speaker 00

  This was awesome. This was awesome.