'I went out of my mind': Billy Corgan says Siamese Dream destroyed his life

Billy Corgan says Siamese Dream was almost the end of the Smashing Pumpkins - and of him. Photo / Richard Robinson

Front man Billy Corgan has revealed he nearly committed suicide while making the classic Smashing Pumpkins album Siamese Dream.

In a new interview about the band's second album, released in 1993, Corgan also told BBC One host Zane Lowe that he went "out of my mind" during recording sessions.

"We rehearsed a lot, we worked together a lot, we argued about things other than music, we actually never argued about music," NME.com reported Corgan as saying about the album, which included some of the band's biggest hits, including Today, Rocket, Disarm and Cherub Rock.

"They believed in what the album represented, they actually really believed in the album, but the actual physical making of the record, they couldn't live up to that level of scrutiny, they couldn't live up to that level of pressure.

"It destroyed my health you know, it destroyed my relationships, I went out of my mind."

Guitarist James Iha and bassist D'arcy Wretzky left the Pumpkins when the band broke up in 2000, and no longer talk to Corgan.

Corgan, who will release the Pumpkins' ninth studio album Oceania early next year, said Siamese Dream was so difficult to make he had started anticipating his own death.

"I was suicidal, and I'd been plotting my own death for about two months, and if you've ever read anything about the warning signs of suicide one of them is you give away all your stuff, and I'd given away all my stuff, I gave away all my records, I started giving away my guitars," he said.

"I was fantasising about my own death, I started thinking what my funeral would be like and what music would be played, I was at that level of insanity."

But he admitted Siamese Dream, which will be re-released next year, was his favourite Pumpkins album.

"Even though it wasn't the one that sold the most, it's the one that seems to have come through the best. As dark a record as Siamese Dream is, there's a lot of fun in it, it's almost like we're kind of laughing at how stupid the whole thing is.

"It's like, here's my pop song about suicide and here's my epic song about child abuse, and here's my big middle finger to the indie world."

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- Herald online