BILLY CORGAN: “DAVE GROHL GETS TO BE A NEW ARTIST, BUT SOMEBODY ELSE DOESN’T?”
Here are is a quote from TheStar.com‘s new interview with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan:
“If I just go back to the old alchemy, I see that as a diminishing set of returns — although I would probably be rewarded in this culture which rewards sentimentality,” he says. “Having had my moments of artistic indulgence where I just made music for myself, I looked at the Smashing Pumpkins as having one route and one route only: either we were going to recapture some ephemeral power or we were going to fail and I was basically gonna just pack up the whole shop. Because I am not gonna be an oldies act. It’s not in my DNA.”
“I think it’s so fucking insulting. I’m 45 years old. I mean, Dave Grohl gets to be a new artist, but somebody else doesn’t? I don’t get this. It’s like the haves and the have-nots. And I understand why everybody runs scared and where it’s just easier to just stay within expectations, but to me that’s not the promise of alternative music or what it’s about.”
“That’s not the promise of the bard or the troubadour or Woody Guthrie. At some point, you’re either in the tradition or you’re not.”
Dave Grohl walked out from behind the drunk it to sing and play guitar in a new band, whose music was sent to radio without names of the band members.
He did it the right way.
He didn’t just hire the bass player from A Perfect Circle and announce a supergroup. You moron.
I think artists of all kinds should not limit them selves to their own expectations and labels of what is or what was,these things can dilute and confuse,what is absolutely certain. The ever deparate need for more innovative originality!
@joe please shhhhhh
It is because Billy has his band HE put together and HE bills as the Smashing Pumpkins, a band that is a older band nowadays
Dave created the Foo Fighters, totally separate from Nirvana, and has done so many different things in the past decade and a half that he is billed as “new” because he is doing things totally unrelated to Nirvana that just happen to be hugely popular
Dave Grohl is actually still great at what he does. You sir, are frankly not.
Billy,Shut the hell up!
Billy corgan is SUCH a whiney little bitch
Goddamn he’s as annoying as courtney love and axl rose combined
All this guy does is talk, that’s why no-one listens. Billy Corgan hasn’t tried to be “new”. If you want to be new, start a new group not called Smashing Pumpkins and play only the new groups material until established – can’t see that happening
No Billy, noone allows Grohl to get anything but himself. Grohl is the same artist he;s always been, just with ever ongoing new projects, bands from his soul, rock from every which way he knows to kick ass. Realize that.
I wonder what Billy Corgan of 1991 would think and say about Smashing Pumpkins 2012?
Max: YES!!!!!
Corgan complains about artists such as Soundgarden and Jane’s Addiction playing and cashing in on the nostalgia tour. Look the SP’s setlists, including last night – Cherub Rock, Disarm, Tonight Tonight, Bullet with Butterfly Wings, Zero.
Why not fill the list with all new and recent material? If he believes so strongly in his own band, and feels so strongly about other artists capitalizing financially on nostalgia, why so many tracks last night from the early 90′s?
He is a fucking hypocrite and is far too critical of what once were his peers.
Does anyone know any sales numbers on SP’s latest album?
Now, i’m just glad Billy Corgan and Courtney Love hadn’t a child together… This child would never shut up!!!
Its amazing! all of you are now music critic’s?? Please do us a favor and don’t comment if your under 18 and don’t have a serious foot in the music industry. Frankly it’s amateur and repetitive. People have to make a living somehow these days and the dynamics of the industry has changed far beyond your simple/limiting understanding. Troll me you die. That is all.
I hear what Billy is saying. I went to high school in the early 2000s and it was still cool to wear Nirvana and Foo Fighters, but if you were into Pearl Jam or Alice or Soundgarden people were kinda like huh or who?- that era had ended by the late 90s. Foo Fighters, like the Chili Peppers have managed to stay very relevant and popular through the years where as the Pumpkins were HUGE in 94 and 95 and then slowly drifted away.Part of that was due to lack of interest, part of it is due to the band breaking up and then only putting out one (crappy) album from 2000-2012. I love the Pumpkins personally and I think the Foo Fighters are a bit overrated, but if Billy could get his act together and write a great song I’m sure this generation would discover the Pumpkins much in the way that people did with the Grateful dead in 1987 when they released Touch of Grey. There are such things as second chances but you can’t put out crap like Zeitgeist and expect people to still want to hear you.
How is this guy not sick of listening to his own voice drone on and on about how the world is so unfair to him and everyone else has it so easy? Every story on here about Billy Corgan seems to have the same theme to it…it’s getting old.
Honestly Billy is far as annoying as the headline on this site make him look. One of the only sincere and outspoken with strong opinions frontman out there.
The only thing more annoying than Billy Corgan talking shit about everyone is the same responses everyone leaves here (ie Billy’s a whiney bitch). We’ve heard it before. Come up with something more creative. It’s like people copy and paste unoriginal insults from other comment pages.
@BigM kinda straying off the subject but I’m surprised to see you pretty much say Pearl Jam was not a popular band in the early 2000′s. Can’t put them in the same convo withe Alice and Soundgarden who were not even a baby at that time. Pearl Jam never stopped making albums or broke up and has all the original members aside drone the drummer who was an upgrade. PearlJam is will sell out a show long before the Pumkins to this day.
its like billy is so obsessed with being part of the cool crowd (pj,sg,foos etc) yet they want literally nothing to do with him… so he resorts to saying things like his fav singer is layne and the foos are not new. pl is just an ok band, sg is just doing it for the money….this guy needs help. get over it billy the cool kids cant stand you and it is your fault. your whole gig smacks with effort that is subpar
maybe because dave grohl made a new band and corgan still uses the same smashing pumpkins names and yet doesn’t play smashing pumpkins songs?
CHANGE YOUR FUCKING BAND NAME IDIOT. YOU AREN’T SMASHING PUMPKINS ANYWAYS.
Have some class dude. This is why people don’t like you.
Kurt, do you ‘have a serious foot in the music industry?’ (wtf does that even mean?) People are entitled to their own opinions, ESPECIALLY when it comes to something like music. I’m pretty sure the comment section is for expressing them too. Why do you read them if you find them that annoying? I think you’re the troll buddy.
If Billy Corgan was writing good music, it would sell, as would his concert tickets. It’s really that simple. His nonstop crying makes me even less likely to give his music a chance. (billy, is that you commenting under a pseudonym? You little rascal!)
How will I die now that I’ve trolled you?
@Wes C. Addle: Come on, you’re not really this big of a moron, are you? You’re calling Billy a hypocrite for playing a few old songs when he played EVERY song off his new album? Tell me one other artist that has enough confidence in a new album to do this.
Who cares about album sales? If the music’s good, it’s good. Period. If you correlate good music with record sales in today’s world, you haven’t a clue.
@Wes:
You have no idea what you’re talking about…. Billy is playing the new album from start to finish on tour right now, LOL! Get your facts straight. Or is that too much to ask of you?
Billy Corgan is awesome. Am i the only person that agrees with everything he says. Foo Fighters suck and im surprises more people dont hear it
I second everything that @Max said.. He is so fucking annoying sometimes.
@Shameinyou – Their new stuff isn’t the greatest but the first two albums were awesome.
This is completely pointless
I wondered why Dave Grohl always gets a pass for making crap music just because he’s a decent guy and he was in Nirvana. Seriously, if you think about it, Foo Fighters aren’t really all that different than Nickelback. Are they better than Nickelback? Of course. Do they play the same type of general crap corporate rock? 100% yes.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^YES, thank you vs for saying it perfectly
@Wes C. Addie that’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. Corgan is playing his WHOLE new album start to finish every concert. To say he’s going up there and just playing the “hits” is totally and completely inaccurate. Even on the last tour, the only “hits” played were Cherub Rock and Today.
Nice to finally see some people standing up for Billy. Si much undeserved/exagerated hate towards him around here…
@Vs:
My lord, you’ve gotta be kidding me. Just because the Foos don’t push the envelope like Radiohead doesn’t mean they’re in the same category as Nickelback. Dave Grohl actually knows how to write a good rock song. Nickelback does not. End of comparison.
Watchin SG @ Lollapolooza…again…KING ANIMAL NEEDS TO MAKE TIME SPEED UP UNTIL IT COMES OUT then Sloooow it down so I have all the time I need to fully enjoy it!
Cobain once wore a t-shirt for a Rollling Stone photo shoot that said “CORPORATE ROCK STILL SUCKS.” Almost 20 years later, this still holds true. I don’t care if you’re Journey, Dave Grohl, or Nickelback, you still suck.
Kurt wasn’t any less corporate rock than Dave Grohl is. If you sign to a major label, you’re corporate per definition. That’s how you get your music out to the masses. I guess, in your mind, the fact that Dave Grohl isn’t embarrassed by nor hates that he’s successful makes him a sellout?
I don’t understand why Billy said this about Dave since as far as I can tell, Dave is doing a new style or at least somewhat different than before with the garage rock, and I don’t think he’s saying he’s a new artist as a musician, but did Billy mean Them Crooked Vultures in which Dave is the drummer mainly or the new-style Foo Fighters of Wasting Light album. Either way, he’s involved in making great music and that’s what fans want. Billy just needs to make great music and not worry about what other musicians, singers, songwriters are doing.
To me, a large part of corporate rock is writing music with the intention of playing arenas. You know, the Foo Fighters, Coldplays, and the Def Leppards of the world. ^^and in response to Dave Grohl making great music, wait, what? That’s quite a stretch, no? There are very few songwriters I’d call “great,” and Grohl is far from this list.
A stretch in your opinion, sure, but not in a lot of other people’s opinions. He’s written some pretty great stuff with the Foo Fighters,(There’s Nothing left to Lose is a beautiful album) and he’s written some crap. I give him all the credit in the world though, because he’s done exactly what he’s wanted & been successful at it. Corgan should take a lesson from Grohl rather than crying about it.
Foo Fighters aside, his drum work on TCV, Killing Joke & Songs for the Deaf is nothing short of remarkable. Personally I wish he would play drums full time & disband the Foo.
Billy Corgan is so desperate to be in the spotlight again that he’s capable of hooking himself up into other people’s success. The smashing pumpkins are lame, they had “Siamese Dream” & “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” and every other release they had were only fillers looking for commercial success, this website has nothing to do with Billy Corgan ,he’s neither grunge nor an alternative artist.
I’d beg to differ, wasogrunge. To call Oceania or Adore filler is juvenile. Even if you don’t like his songwriting, these are easily two of his best albums. If commercial success was important to the band, Adore would have sounded like Siamese Dream/MCIS Part II. How is he not an alternative artist? So he’s a mainstream artist? Rubbish. The only way you’d even type that is if you knew nothing about the band’s career.
Agreed Megamania. The dude is totally uninformed. I would add, Gish, filler? Hum I don’t think so.
who cares.. billy talkin, francis typin, n courtney whornan, i love this site. im 29 i know and seen more then a lot of people on here , i rarely type . but keep up the good work bret, add tool believe it or not they had the sound.a
how old r u brett, im 29. i lived it did u
What I want to know about the Foos is what happened to them. 1 great album albeit written mostly when he was in Nirvana, 1 pretty solid album in TCATS and then a one way ticket to lameville.
They seemed to shift the focus from the 90′s alternative fans to people who watch Friends, or maybe they are one in the same now?
:facepalm:
STHU Billy.
Dave ‘gets to’. Geeezus.
:doublefacepalm:
Billy need a shirt that says “Does not play well with others”.
Because Grohl, Vedder, Cornell, and everyone else he’s slagged lately, do.
If Billy says ANYTHING about Josh Homme my SP collection is out the F’ing door, I swear it.
Billy has turned into Courtney. How many NAMES has he dropped in the month of October? Someone please take a count,….
@Christine how does all those headlines make SP music less awesome? I don’t understand that. The worse part about it is if you take the time to read the full interviews, Billy never comes off that bad. Damn at least he’s entertaining and will speak about any topics.
To compare his intellect and his attitude with Courtney is, I’m sorry, ridiculous.
Just to put my opinion in here: Dave Grohl sells zillions of records. He’s a cool dude and I really like him, but his music, to me, is on par with Nickelback. It’s poppy, it’s polished, it’s not angry or slightly disturbing. It’s the stuff 16 year old girls like. So, he gets to be a new artist, but I don’t know if it’s really that great considering the sterile stuff he’s been putting out. Selling plenty of records has never been a mark of great musical achievement. Look at Britney and that Gangnam fucking idiot.
Pearl Jam, to me, lost the plot a long time ago when they started putting out punky type stuff and their music lost all meaning (again, to me). Vitalogy marked the end of PJ as a meaningful band. I stopped buying their records after that one.
I’d love for a band to recapture the energy, passion, “underground-ness” of some of those early 90s bands. I don’t seem to find anything that speaks to me musically (Soundgarden’s latest doesn’t do it for me, Pearl Jam I have given up on, Alice in Chains without Layne doesn’t work and I haven’t really found anything to fill the void). Apple really fucked the industry and although it’s easier to distribute and share music than ever, it’s become harder to make it as a band. Corporate rock sucks (two words that shouldn’t be side by side) but anything remotely corporate sucks. Music has changed forever, rock music has changed, although there’s always been shit bands. I get Corgan’s saying about renewing yourself, but it has to be done with integrity.
dave was in nirvana and all the sentimentality of that got porjected onto him its that simple he did announce it and he did maniuplaute it and he got the kickbacks of nostalogua for kurt, he took pat with him who is one of my best friends whose quit three times and im not telling you why thats for pat and me to know but dave is also a thief, who steals from my kidand i dont get why he has plenty of money from this nirvana nostalgia band of his , and the thing is they sorta sound like nickelabkc to me, objectiuvekly past the couple 100 million in nirvana inc which is up on my facebook, an im tryin to tag it onto the everyone loves our town thing, so when you see INC and not LLC thats the give and when you see PARTNERSHIP right out there these are fbi files from a forensic analusyt now dead who was ready to send to the doj but everyone calling me :”crazy: and leaving me with the negatives of kurts death, not the positives that dave gets, and ive tried to reason with him but he can affford to keep it going and hes so fueled by hatred for kurt mostly he could not stand him and it was mutual, coudl not stand kurt and treated him like shit which is why the band was breaking up, if you read charlies book youd know that but it appears you just dont want to accept that, so peace, ill see them in court someday if not my kid certaibly will, parnterhsup means it wasnt filed illegally in 92 and for this whole time they have recoeved 1.3 of kurts writing they didnt write barely a note of the nirvana music publishing its all kurt and theyve been stealing that too, look at the pages if the guy ever tells me how to tag it for the facebook “everybody loves our town” i cant jpeg a document here ir id happuly show you, x c and theres no point in calling me crazy or jealous sometimes i am jealous that dave got all the good stuff and i got the shitty stuff but saves audiecne is hetero dudes with bad taste and i wouldnt dsay hes anyones favorite band i would sauy thaty my fans are passionare and stick by me thick and think and are the homos and the freaks which is what kurt would jhave wanted and the sensitive cool hetoro guys who think the foos are like nicklelback or creed, x c
Wow! Honestly, I have the feeling I’m going to get ripped for this comment. I’m 47 years old. Anyway, all the classic rock bands that really kicked butt were pretty much done making good music by the early 80′s. Some for no fault of their own other than drugs and death. I remember sweeping the floor one night in my garage in 1987 listening to the radio when “Ocean Size” came on. Blew my mind. I also saw the free show Pearl Jam put on at the Seattle Mural Amphitheater, Mother Love Bone, Soundgarden and Jane’s Addiction at the Paramount in Seattle, Soundgarden at a little theater in Olympia, WA and Alice at the Evergreen State College in Olympia. These bands all kicked major a$$ at the time. I never had the privilege of seeing Nirvana live. That is one thing I regret bigtime. Anyway, long-winded post here….Smashing Pumpkins back then were amazing. Gish was a total artistically expressive album that I rank in my top 10. Dave Grohl (here come the haters) to me seems like a total rock whore these days. The Foo Fighters TO ME just don’t offer any feeling that the above mentioned bands. I can definitely see the corrolation people have made between Foo and Nickelback. TO ME the Foo Fighters represent bland rock with catchy easy chord tunes…aka….SELLOUT! What I find bewildering is that Dave has been hailed throughout the rock community as someone that is GOD-like. Personally, I don’t get it at all. Billy, I haven’t really paid attention to because I haven’t heard anything from him lately that moves my soul. I think they both can kiss all of our a$$es until they offer something other than BS and $hitty music. That’s my $.02. Go Seahawks and time for another beer.
I think Billy misses the old days when the band consisted of the original Smashing Pumpkins members. I think he tries too hard to throw sentimentality out the window, but only because he is completely sentimental himself.
If you watch any of the Smashing Pumpkins old live footage from the 90′s, you’ll notice Billy smiling and having a great time. Now he seems dark and depressed when he’s on stage. Kind of lonely, I get a totally different vibe.
He even has a female bassist and an Asian guitarist! And I don’t think it’s to fool people, people know it’s not D’arcy or James, I think it’s just so he can get a taste of the past.
I believe he wanted to keep the Smashing Pumpkins name out of sentimental reasons. And the fact he doesn’t like playing older songs is either because he misses the old members and it brings back a lot of memories, or he’s a little embarrassed that none of the original members are there anymore when those songs came out, or maybe a little of both.
Either way, I love Billy and love the fact that he resurrected the name “Smashing Pumpkins” even if he’s the only original member.
I’m sentimental, so it makes me happy.
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