Billy Corgan talks Machines of God tour, Smashing Pumpkins reissues and Howard Stern

USA Today

2 days ago

Billy Corgan talks Machines of God tour, Smashing Pumpkins reissues and Howard Stern
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Live from Cleveland: It's 'Saturday Night' at the Rock Hall
"SNL: Ladies & Gentlemen...50 Years of Music," a new exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum looks at the NBC show's influence on music.
Onstage, Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan cuts an imposing figure.
His towering, bald-headed frame shrouded in floor-length coats and a distinctive voice that meshes a bellow with a whine are forever linked with the alt-grunge-goth-rock that thundered through the '90s.
In conversation, Corban is soft-spoken and thoughtful as he chats from his historic 1920's home just north of his native Chicago.
He's readying his new solo project, Billy Corgan and The Machines of God, which also includes recently recruited Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Kiki Wong, drummer Jake Hayden and bassist Kid Tigrrr (aka Jenna Fournie).
The quartet will hit the road June 7 in Baltimore for the monthlong A Return to Zero tour, where they will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Pumpkins' seminal 'Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness' album. Along with the many hits spawned from the diamond-certified release ('1979,' 'Tonight, Tonight' and 'Bullet with Butterfly Wings' among them), The Machines of God will also tackle songs from the double album 'Machina/The Machines of God' and 'Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music' – both being remixed and rereleased this summer – as well as 2024's 'Aghori Mhori Mei.'
Along with prepping for the 16-date tour, which will hit cities including Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Minneapolis, Corgan has stayed busy with his Madame Zuzu's tea shop in Highland Park, Illinois and his popular "The Magnificent Others" podcast. He's also energized about the Nov. 21-30 pairing with Chicago's Lyric Opera Orchestra and Chorus for 'A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness.'
Take a deep breath and he'll tell us more about all.
Question: Last summer you were playing to 50,000 people with Green Day on a stadium tour and now you're heading to small theaters. Where are you more comfortable?
Answer: I'm fine with a stadium full of people. There's the economy of, more people equals more money and more T-shirts, but honestly it's the economy of time. It's hard to communicate in such a complicated digital world. When we would play a small show in the '90s, even in early days of internet, it felt like you were doing this secret club thing and people would find out about it and tell the world. Now, if you don't operate at scale, it's like it never happened. I laughingly call it the digital tree that falls in the forest that no one hears.
And obviously this won't be stadium-style staging.
Any small tour you have to make a series of choices and mine is supreme sonic quality and production. I made the joke that you'll see me with a swinging light bulb behind me because I can't afford to bring a full Pumpkins light package. But my sense from the fans I've talked to is they're excited to see these songs in this context, so the set list is really what they're interested in.
Why did you want to go on the road with this band configuration?
For years I've pushed my bandmates to take a different approach to touring that would require a different mindset, which is, there is value in us playing deeper shows past our expected greatest hits reign. Unfortunately, we're not in agreement on that and we've had a gentleman's agreement since James (Iha) came back (to Smashing Pumpkins) that we wouldn't do anything unless everyone was on the same wavelength. But they're totally cool with what I'm doing.
So James and (drummer) Jimmy (Chamberlin) were asked to be part of this project?
Oh, yeah. But to be fair, I've been pushing for this conceptually for more than five years so I reached a point – I'm 58 years old – of, like, OK if you're not into it I'm just gonna do it because I'm a proof of concept guy. It's something I want to do and there's a host of reasons for why it will matter once you do it. One thing I found with operating the tea house is there is a way to make small, big.
Speaking of the tea house, how involved are you in its operation?
Every day. My wife runs it, but I hear about it every day. We have the huge archival 'Machina' box set version with 80 songs coming that you can only get from the tea house (or its website).
It's also the 30th anniversary of 'Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness.' What do you most remember from that period?
I think the good news is 30 years is enough time to let it all work itself through – the good, the bad, the heartache, the regrets. I think within the group we look at the period very fondly as far as, wow we achieved something magical forever. If there is any regret it's that we weren't able to put Humpty Dumpty back together in the same way. (Success) creates such a force that you're swept on a river that you never know where it goes. Maybe we were in sort of a spell and like a lot of beautiful dreams, once the spell was broken, you then you get down to the business of how to get out of Oz.
Let's talk about the podcast, but I also want to talk about how great you are every time you're on Howard Stern's (SiriusXM) show.
Howard is one of my great inspirations for the how I do the podcast. The greatest people I've been interviewed by are Charlie Rose and Howard Stern. It feels very conversational and that's something I've tried to emulate. Howard has been one of the biggest supporters of me, one of the biggest to mock the fact that we're not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and one of the biggest defenders of me as an artist. I have a lot of loyalty to Howard
You've had a really eclectic lineup of musicians on the podcast – Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo, (Missing Persons frontwoman) Dale Bozzio, Carnie Wilson, Gene Simmons. What are you looking for when you're booking?
My number one goal is I want to talk to people who I think have tremendous value and their value in the culture is not properly understood. Dale is one of the most influential artists of the last 40 years, and yet most people would not know her band or her unique story, like that Frank Zappa saw something in her and that's a direct line to Lady Gaga and the pop stars of today. A lot of artists with long careers struggle with being overlooked or underappreciated. It's not a crusade, but a way to tell the world, do you know you've overlooked a true treasure here? I think it's criminal there is a wide open space of stories to be told and nowhere to tell them.