Was it his incandescent baldness, a look he adopted before he turned 30? His easily parodied adenoidal bray? The fact that he wasn’t “the cute one”, which he was known to complain about in interviews? Whatever it was, it hung over Corgan by the time the Pumpkins broke up in 2000, and certainly when they re-formed a few years later with drummer Jimmy Chamberlin as the only other member of the original lineup. But although nobody seemed to mind the Gallagher brothers’ braggadocio, something seemed to grate when Corgan did it. The Smashing Pumpkins were a bold and great band.
Smashing Pumpkins in 1991 … (clockwise from left) James Iha, D’Arcy Wretzky, Jimmy Chamberlin and Billy Corgan.
I wondered how differently many of his previously controversial quotes – about social justice warriors, a pizza fast-food chain, the Shrek soundtrack – might read in the context of their delivery. Irony may not always be a healthy coping device, but having fun with an interview seems like the least a rock star should do. Some version of this dynamic repeats constantly over the next hour. But Corgan says it playfully, with such self-awareness that he gets away with it: suggesting that he knows this is absurd, but it’s how he feels, and actually it’s even appropriate given his stature that he’d rather risk ridicule than minimise his feelings. Now, this reads like something a famously self-important rock star would say.
They were sort of interested in separating me from my own true narrative.” We are in a Manhattan hotel, discussing how Corgan came to realise that his lifelong pursuit of music – and the undeniable success that had come with it – had left him unfulfilled, when he says this: “I would watch people quite cleverly try to disassemble what I’d actually built. I f you have ever paid attention to the Smashing Pumpkins, you know that Billy Corgan is a famously self-important rock star: the type who talks at length to the press about how great he is and then complains about being misquoted.
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