Thursday 14 June 2012

Billy Corgan Stirs the Shit, Again...

None too surprisingly with an album to promote, "spiritually enlightened" Corgan once again grabs the headlines by bad-mouthing former friends/lovers/bandmates/other bands... etc etc etc ... from our pals over at HU here's a portion of a recent interview in NME:
Billy Corgan: Success held that band together longer than it should have been held together. It was dysfunctional. There were a lot of years there where I regretted the way it all went down, and now I think it was meant to die when it died how it died. We stole from the Promethean fire to fuel whatever our weird psychic death trip was and then we paid for it. Or got too close to the sun and crashed. It was just meant to be that way. And you can draw parallels from that with Jimmy’s situation [when he left the band in 2009] because maybe that was just a continuance of something that hadn’t been resolved back then.
NME/Emily Mackay: He said in his statement on leaving that he “couldn’t just cash the cheque”…
Corgan: See now, here is a perfect opportunity to bury Jimmy as a fucking liar. But I won’t. That’s a lie. That statement’s just a flat-out lie.
NME: Was it that you wanted to take the band in a commercial direction, and he didn’t?
Corgan: Ha ha! No, it’s the exact opposite. I wish I could explain it, but I don’t trust the world to understand the complexity of it. I think it’s telling that the first thing Jimmy did when he left the band was make a statement about money because that had a lot to do with it. But if you look at what I’ve done since he left, where have I made money?
Later: 
NME: Do you still feel any rancour towards the other band members about the way it ended? 
Corgan: Uhhh… I’m OK with Jimmy. We don’t have a relationship at the moment, but I mean, I have no ill will. I want to see him do well. James Iha I think is just a piece of shit. I think he’s one of the worst human beings I’ve ever met in my life. And D’Arcy, she’s sort of, in her own way, sort of an innocent [...]If there’s any culprit in this it’s Iha. But, y’know, he was there at the right time of my life, we did do good things together, I think he is a good musician when he gives a fuck, which most of the time he doesn’t. And that’s about it.
I'm not even going to bother to try and unravel the layers of bullshit in the above statements.





4 comments:

  1. He constantly amazes me with his insistence on pettiness and making himself look like a stupid child in public. Astounding and slightly amusing...

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  2. that's just ridiculous. why is Mr. Corgan always so angry in recent interviews? as if the whole world has turned against him. I really don't understand this anymore. Billy should be happy that not every single fan has turned his back on him yet. Billy just never keeps any promise. What happened to the Teargarden project? One song every 3-4 weeks? Hm.
    What happened to the record club? Where are all those songs that he promised to release online? Is it now in the end now all about making profit out of it?
    Oceania was meant to be released in the fall of last year. Aha. What about those concerts in Germany last year? 75% of them were cancelled without a credible reason.
    Whatever ... get real Billy!

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  3. I think it's incredibly sad and probably more of a misunderstanding of how people speak. I've met Jimmy and Billy on numerous occasions. Considering how close they were musically, they are such totally different people, from such totally different backgrounds and mental states - it's amazing how they survived together so long. My take on it is this - Jimmy meant 'cash the check' as in, he's just doing it for the money and had lost that fire and he was basically becoming a backing musician and wanted to go off and feel the pressure himself and follow his own direction. Billy took that as a crack about money-grabbing.

    I don't want to defend Billy, but basically he's like a lot of brilliant but abused-background people. He's paranoid and feels constantly that the world is out to put him down. I've interviewed him and you can say something critical and he'll take it well and come out with a really observant, objective response - and then you can try to compliment him and he'll break off into a weird rant like it was a criticism. It's very clearly a mental conditioning problem.

    The issue is very little to do with Jimmy Chamberlin as a person or a drummer. It is entirely that Billy sees every interview as an inquisition and that it will be used to portray him as a self-serving egomaniac (which to some extent he is - and the more he tries to hide it, the more exaggerated it becomes!).

    Jimmy is not as cogent as Billy. But he's a lot more secure. Though I think he has a lot of guilt issues about the circumstances of being kicked out of the band. He's a confident person in everything, but mention that or being 'allowed' back into the band and he's essentially saying he was so guilt-ridden that he felt Billy was more or less a Saint to let him back. I think he wanted to leave but he felt like he owed Billy a lot and had to support him. His comment was very much to be taken by those who know Jimmy as 'I'm tired of this shit but I felt like I had to support Billy and now I need to get out for his sake and mine.' Billy, sadly, didn't get this at all (though I know a lot of mutual friends tried to express this) and felt like it was another attack from an ex-bandmate. It's just abandonment issues (which Billy admits to quite openly a lot oddly). His hatred of James Iha was the feeling that James detached emotionally from the Pumpkins ahead of time and was already leaving well before the end.

    It's just a sad situation from a dysfunctional family. Luckily the new Pumpkins record is actually good (partly since Billy for once allowed his new co-horts to modify and expand the songs in their own ways) and because it's a group of people who WANT to be there. Jimmy can continue to make music for his own reasons without guilt or the pressure of supporting Billy's numerous emotional issues (which to be frank everyone accepted when it's a source of great art - but slams when it's misdirected as venom).

    Paul

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  4. Interesting post Paul. I agree with you on many of the points. Don't reckon much to the new SP record however; my reason's for liking the pumpkins are diametrically opposed to the ethos of the new record; i.e. it's a flat revision of the past. Each subsequent release had been a distinct evolution.

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