Smashing Pumpkins' leader Billy Corgan is pig-headed about music and proud of it, he tells Scott Kara.
People assume the guy who wrote Mellon Collie died and fell off a bridge somewhere along the way," says Billy Corgan in that dark, foreboding voice of his. Not that Corgan, the frontman and creative force behind the Smashing Pumpkins, is discounting any of the other music he's made since Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, his 1995 masterwork. It's just that there have been times in the intervening years when he was on the verge of packing it in.
"But," he continues, "that guy's still in there, he just has to want to come out and have fun. For a long time it wasn't fun. I lost my special relationship with music. It's not that I stopped trying, or didn't love it, it just didn't feel magical. I reached the point where I seriously thought about quitting and walking away."
It's time then, it seems, for Corgan to come out and have some fun because he reckons he's "geared up again".
He's had a few incarnations since the Pumpkins first split up in 2000 - as the shortlived Zwan, then his patchy solo synth-based project, and a return to form as the Smashing Pumpkins on Zeitgeist, a mostly tense and raging beast of an album from 2007. But it's new Pumpkins' songs like Spangled (the most delightful Pumpkins song since Today perhaps?) and the rowdier and raging Astral Planes and Freak, from latest album Teargarden by Kaleidyscope, that are proof Corgan could be back to his songwriting best.
"And sorry, but from 1998 until now there just hasn't been a lot of incredible rock music made. There are a lot of reasons for that. And believe me if there had been a lot of great music made in that period then I don't think there'd be any room for me right now," he cackles.
That sort of unflinching and almost vitriolic spiel is classic Corgan. He's intense, always thoughtful, and confident about his music - the good music at least - to the point of being full of himself. But he's also seemingly a much cheerier and light-hearted chap these days than he has been in the past.
It helps he's got a band he's happy with. The latest lot of Pumpkins - with Corgan the only original member after he fired drummer Jimmy Chamberlain last year - is made up of bass player Nicole Fiorentino, guitarist Jeff Schroeder and drummer Mike Byrne.
"We're crushing things over here [in the US]. I encourage people to take the journey because there are not a lot of my kind of bands on the planet. To see a band who can really play, night in night out, a different show, jam for 25 minutes, and piss you off, or take you to the other side of the moon that's a rare thing."
And Teargarden By Kaleidyscope is his most ambitious album to date. Forget the 28-track double album epic of Mellon Collie, this sucker is 44 tracks long. At least it will be eventually because Corgan is drip-feeding the songs to fans for free on his website.
"People aren't listening to albums. They may still buy them but I can't see how they are listening to them like we used to," he says laughing. "I wanted to do something exciting and challenging, and the easiest thing I thought would be to get rid of the business side of it as much as I [could] and have the artist and the listener and nothing in between."
This stance sums up his new resolute approach to the music scene. For example, the Pumpkins' concert at the Auckland Town Hall on Tuesday was announced out of the blue only a few weeks ago, almost as if it was a spur of the moment decision. Initially New Zealand was not on the schedule as part of the Pumpkins' Asian tour but Corgan says he told the promoters: "I don't care what the f*** we're doing, we have to go to Australia and New Zealand because they need to see what we're doing".
"I can do whatever I want when I want. I feel like I've earned the credibility to do it. And for me, being free has everything to do with pursuing my vision as an artist. And that is often ridiculed or joked about, but I'm still around after 20 years and still credible and more relevant than most people of my generation could ever dream of.
"I've managed a pretty good run here by doing it my way because it's just about making more music."
Corgan has always been musically ambitious and uncompromising. During the heyday of grunge - a term he's not adverse to because "I think we benefited from the label but it also hurt us in the long run because it made us smaller than what we were" - he and his band were over-achievers in a generation of slackers. None of his contemporaries were writing songs like Disarm or Tonight Tonight, he offers as an example.
"We weren't interested in falling into anybody else's category, we were always keen to expand beyond it."
He is also more than a little pig-headed when it comes to music.
"I agree with you. I'm totally pig-headed," he says laughing. And with this he takes off on one of his rampant, yet passionate rants. "My father was a musician and he was super-picky. So growing up I'd sit in front of the TV and Al Green would come on and he'd go, 'Good'. I'd go, 'Why?'. 'Because he's a great singer'. Then another guy would come on TV and he'd go, 'Shit'. I'd go, 'Why?' 'Because he can't f***** sing'. I grew up with that.
"And I also grew up believing in the power of music thanks to John Lennon and Bob Marley. Music can be whatever you want it to be. I have no problem with that but don't try to say everybody is equal because they are not. I used to sit there in [Pumpkins'] practice and say, 'Look, we are never going to be better than the Beatles, so we have two choices, to quit or try really hard so at least we can hold our heads high that we did our best even though we're not the best'. That's still the ethic in my band because I owe it to the [musicians] I admire to at least be respectful.
"If you want music to be fun and crazy then at least show respect for it, but don't turn it into something like cookies to sell with some lame message. I don't like being lumped in with those people and unfortunately we have grown into a culture that lumps people like me in with people like that and expects me to justify why I'm the weird one.
"So there you go. But I'm going to go with that: pig-headed."
LOWDOWN
Who: Smashing Pumpkins
Playing: Auckland Town Hall, Tuesday.
New album: Teargarden By Kaleidyscope, being released online one track at a time for free.
Essential albums: Gish (1991); Siamese Dream (1993); Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995); Zeitgeist (2007)
-TimeOut
