Interview With The Vampire

Given his sharply ingrained perfectionist streak, it was perhaps inevitable that Billy Corgan would end up as a solo artist. During his time as front man with the Smashing Pumpkins, Corgan seemed to be on a quest for musical perfection. Whether driven by personal demons (of which he has had more than his fair share), a keen sense of competition with contemporaries like Kurt Cobain and Trent Reznor, or perhaps a combination of both, Corgan apparently wasn’t satisfied with anything less than musical, thematic and aesthetic brilliance.

Of course, this single-minded approach was bound to ruffle a few feathers, and duly sent the rumour mill into overdrive, giving birth to some pretty extraordinary stories in the process. Perhaps the most startling was the legendary tale that Corgan single-handedly recorded all the guitar and bass parts for the Pumpkins’ magnificent second album, Siamese Dream. It would be all too easy to dismiss Corgan as just another despotic rock star with delusions of grandeur, were it not for the fact that the Pumpkins produced some of the finest American rock ‘n’ roll of the ‘90s.
Corgan’s breadth of musical reference was truly staggering. From the gorgeous shimmering psychedelia of ‘Rhinoceros’ to the crunching glam/hard-rock riffing of ‘Here Is No Why’, the orchestral splendour of ‘Tonight, Tonight’ and the virtually flawless wistful synth-pop of tunes like ‘1979’ and ‘Perfect’, Corgan proved himself to be not just one of the most gifted American songwriters of recent years, but also one of Generation X’s greatest artistic talents, period.
He undoubtedly had his flaws (totally unwarranted paranoia about media angles and a tendency to whine like an annoying ten year-old chief among them), but such was Corgan’s standing among critics and public alike, that his comeback with Zwan following the Pumpkins’ 2000 break-up was among the most anticipated returns of recent years. As with the singer’s previous band, however, Zwan became embroiled in Spinal Tap-style internecine feuding (much of which was again attributed to Corgan’s control-freak tendencies), and decided to call it a day shortly after the release of their first album.
And so the singer finds himself in the position he has probably coveted all along – that of having total artistic control, with no dissenting band members to contend with. His debut solo offering, TheFutureEmbrace, is a familiar collection of driving hard-rock and ragged, melancholy ballads, and also continues the singer’s inveterate habit of rehabilitating tragically unhip acts from the rock annals. Having previously duetted with Simon Le Bon on a version of Duran Duran’s ‘Night Boat’, this time around Corgan has recorded a Bee Gees track, ‘To Love Somebody’, with fellow goth overlord, Robert Smith. How did the collaboration come about?
“Well, Robert was here in Chicago on tour last summer,” recalls Corgan, “and we spent the whole night shooting the breeze, talking, playing guitars and so on. I told him I was making my new album, and he said, ‘I’d love to do something with you’. So, it was an open-ended thing for a while, but when it came time to decide where Robert would best fit in, I thought that was the ideal track. I just loved the song, and ironically, it has a little bit of a Cure vibe to it. It’s a beautiful tune, but it’s got some twisted Corgan logic as well. I think the Bee Gees are one of the great bands, actually. They’re constantly overlooked and I think people are starting to understand that they’re really important.”
Does Corgan view being a solo artist as an interim project, or is he definitely done with the band format?
“It’s pretty simple for me,” he states. “I’m either gonna be a solo artist or I’m gonna be in the Smashing Pumpkins. There’s no other band or concept that I’m really interested in any more. If I decide at some point in the future that I wanna go back into a band, it’ll be called the Smashing Pumpkins. But at the moment I’m happy to be solo.”
One notable aspect of Zwan’s brief lifespan was that cult American author, JT Leroy, wrote the group’s official press bio. Leroy regularly prevails upon musician and actor friends of his to do public readings of his work. Has the writer ever asked Corgan himself to do a reading?
“No, I refuse,” sighs Corgan. “I refuse to get caught up in his celebrity maelstrom; that seems to be one of the weak points of his world. It was interesting how we got to know each other in the first place, actually. He just cold-called me in the studio one day and we’ve been phone-buddies ever since. I’d heard about his books beforehand, but I’m generally not a fiction reader, so I never got around to checking them out. Anyway, he said, ‘I’d really like you to read these books, and let me know what you think’. They were very beautifully written, y’know? I was really knocked out by them.”
Corgan himself ventured into the world of publishing following the dissolution of Zwan, even going so far as to write a full-length book of poetry. How did he find the experience?
“It was kind of bruising, a bit like the world of music,” reflects Corgan, switching into complaint mode. “You kind of have a concept of what you want to accomplish, but until you actually get in there and do it, and get knocked around a bit, you don’t really know the true nature of it. Interestingly enough, poetry is just as lame as rock ‘n’ roll, in terms of politics, the people who want to control what’s good and what’s bad, etc.
“I had a similar reaction to my work as I’d had in music, which was, ‘Who the fuck are you and why are you doing this?’ Having been through that in music, and having critics in that world asking me just who I thought I was, it was a real eye-opener to essentially have to same experience again, and have people fucking with me the same way. ‘Shocking’ wasn’t the right word, but it was certainly surprising to have the same stuff going on in a completely different art form.”

Back in the day, the Smashing Pumpkins enjoyed the patronage of some of the biggest names in rock ‘n’ roll, with U2 and David Bowie among their most high-profile admirers. Indeed, Corgan was invited to perform at Bowie’s 50th birthday bash in Madison Square Garden in 1997, joining in on rousing versions of ‘The Jean Genie’ and ‘All The Young Dudes’. Has he kept in contact with the Dame in the years since?
“Yeah, I saw him last year, when he played in Chicago,” says Corgan. “He was incredible, the best I’d ever heard him sing. It was fantastic, I just loved the shit out of it. I know people say he was a big influence on me musically, but I think that’s a little bit overplayed. He certainly made some phenomenal records, but the thing was that he was a big influence on bands that I love. So I guess you could say that he’s been an indirect influence, in that I love Joy Division as much as I love David Bowie. He really was a big inspiration to them, but does that mean that the Smashing Pumpkins all went back to David Bowie? No. There was a lot of the Beatles in there too, for example.
“But he’s very warm. I’ve known him now for at least 10 or 12 years, and I find that the more I run into him, the warmer he gets. I feel like each time you get a little closer to the man, and a little further away from, y’know, that guy. He’s very well-read, he always keeps himself up on culture, and he always has something to say about everything, and that’s my favourite kind of guy. You can talk to David about politics, you can talk to him about Gene Vincent. He’ll hang with you on whatever. He’s very inspiring in that way.”
Okay, here’s an interesting thing about Billy Corgan. The Smashing Pumpkins were one of the most iconic bands of their generation, sold millions of albums, played to packed-out venues around the globe and continue to be held in considerable esteem by both established artists and young, up-and-coming bands. But remarkably, Corgan seems to retain a strange kind of persecution complex about the group, as if they were never fully given the credit they deserved for their achievements. Engage him in even casual conversation about the Pumpkins’ legacy, and he immediately assumes a defensive stance.
“I always felt that when we were doing the band, our music was a lot more important than people gave us credit for,” he asserts. “It created a strange dynamic where we knew that we were important, but the media treated us like we were unimportant. There was a tension there, which seems to have faded with time. Fans are kind of saying now that the band was important, which is great. The only other thing to add to that is about what went on inside the group, which obviously was an amusement park of drama, drugs and dysfunction, in addition to moments of unbelievable clarity and beauty. And living in that bubble for 12 or 13 years was fascinating sociologically and personally. But at the end of the day, all that fades, and what’s left ultimately is the music. And I’m proud of the music.”
During those years, Corgan was also afforded the opportunity of collaborating with some highly interesting artists, most notably contributing a song to the soundtrack of David Lynch’s horror/noir masterpiece, Lost Highway. Corgan speaks with great affection (and with wonderful humour) about the director’s famously eccentric demeanour.
“Around the time of Lost Highway, I met with him twice, and spoke with him on the phone a bunch,” he remembers. “He’s fascinating. It’s like he’s this deep caricature – a person out of one of his movies for real. He’ll call you on the phone and he’ll be like, (adopts tone of Lynchian folksiness) ‘Howya doin’, Billy?’ (Laughs) And you’re thinkin’, ‘Is he fuckin’ with me?’ Then he’s like (more Lynchian cheeriness) ‘I just wanted to talk to you about that song you’re doing for my movie, Lost Highway.’ (Laughs) And he’s really serious!
“But he’s very sweet, very kind and it was great working with him. I remember this one time, I was sitting with him outside this house in LA that he was using as an editing suite. I was in the backyard with him, and there would be these unbelievably awkward silences. But it was just like one of his movies, you know what I mean? You’re like, ‘Holy shit, I’m in a David Lynch film, right now.’ And you’ve kinda got to go with it, ‘cos you know what it is, and you don’t wanna break the spell. The last thing you wanna say is something like, ‘It’s a nice day.’ ‘Cos you just know that he’s going to say something like, ‘Yes! It is a nice day, isn’t it?’ and you’ll just lose it.”
The interview ends with both of us laughing heartily and trading notes about the brilliance of Lynch’s work. And that’s Billy Corgan: funny, gifted, insightful, stubborn, contrary, frustrating – and fascinating to the last.
To be honest, you wouldn’t want him any other way.

TheFutureEmbrace is released on Warners on June 20.