billy corgan
30 Signature Guitars for Modern Artists
For decades, having a signature guitar was reserved for classic rock legends — the Claptons, the Hendrixes, the Pages, the SRVs and EVHs. But that’s no longer the case. From pop-punk to heavy metal, alt-country to neo-soul, modern artists of all genres and backgrounds are getting signature guitars from companies big and small. Among the titans of the industry, that intentional shift came with a new generation being put into decision-making positions. “When I started, it was largely classic rock and very much a pantheonic Hall of Fame,” Fender’s Executive VP for Products Justin Norvell says of the early 2000s. “It was an end-of-an-iconic-career kind of thing. But it was my feeling that it should be something that people can use to reflect back upon themselves. A Telecaster can mean James Bu...
Watch Billy Corgan Cover ‘When the Levee Breaks’ With Porno for Pyros
The lovefest between Billy Corgan and Perry Farrell continues. A handful of days after performing on Corgan’s livestream fundraiser for the victims of the July 4 shooting in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Farrell brought out the Smashing Pumpkins boss to cover “When the Levee Breaks” during Porno for Pyros’ Lollapalooza set. Joining Corgan was his partner, Chloé Mendel. Billy Corgan joins Porno for Pyros .. covering Led Zeppelin.. @lollapalooza pic.twitter.com/SABqVvYlSm — Andrew Coffey ☕️ (@coffeygrinds) August 1, 2022 Porno for Pyros was a late addition to the Lollapalooza lineup, replacing Farrell’s other band Jane’s Addiction. The alternative pioneers bowed out due to what’s being billed as guitarist Dave Navarro’s bout with long COVID. Previously, a different versi...
Billy Corgan Debuts New Song Inspired by Highland Park Shooting
Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan hosted a virtual benefit concert last night (July 27) for victims of the deadly July 4 mass shooting in his home base of Highland Park, Ill., and took the opportunity to debut a new song, “Photograph,” directly inspired by the incident. Corgan said he got the idea after a local journalist asked him if he’d considered writing a song about the shooting, and afterwards, he appropriated a new Pumpkins track he’d been working on for that purpose. “I started playing something and thought, that could work. Took a nap, woke up and the song was spinning in my head,” he said. “This is my reaction, I guess you could say, to what happened. I don’t know if it’s a good song or a bad song, but it certainly expresses the way that I feel.” Corgan elaborated that the ...
Billy Corgan and Chloé Mendel on Highland Park Fundraiser, Reclaiming ‘Space in the Community’
The shooting in Highland Park, Illinois during a Fourth of July parade, which left seven people dead and 46 others wounded, became a tragedy that the entire nation felt. But for Billy Corgan and his partner, Chloé Mendel, it hit much closer to home — quite literally. “When you go through this, it’s like you don’t want to walk past where this happened,” Corgan tells SPIN over Zoom. “I mean, we were there last night eating ice cream literally right beneath where the shooter was. We’re there all the time, and we have to reclaim our space in the community.” That reclamation is why the two owners of the neighborhood’s tea shop and plant-based emporium, Madame ZuZu’s, are hosting Together and Together Again — A Benefit for the Highland Park Community Foundation, a live-streamed concert to r...
William Patrick Corgan, Noted Cat Person, Unveils Unreleased Christmas Songs For PAWS Chicago
This time last year, William Patrick Corgan said that he’d been working on a Christmas album for a few years that got “junked.” Now, it appears the Smashing Pumpkins singer/guitarist has taken some of those songs out of the proverbial trash. During the annual Christmas show at Madame ZuZu’s, his vegan tea shop in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Corgan played two unreleased seasonal songs — “Evergreen” and “The Magi And The Shiny Bright” — on an acoustic guitar. He also played “Do You Hear What I Hear?” with his three-year-old daughter Philomena who walked off the stage mid-song. [embedded content][embedded content] It’s unclear whether this was a one-off, or whether Corgan has serious plans to revisit his yuletide project (which we hope is the case). “I had written some songs, and I h...
Watch Billy Corgan Break Out 35-Year-Old Rarities for Acoustic Performance
When William Patrick Corgan announced that he’d be performing four acoustic sets at Madame ZuZu’s Emporium — the tea shop he owns in Chicago — they were billed as “William Patrick Corgan Early Years 1985-1990.” For those who struggle with calendars, that means it’s all pre-Gish, and thus before the Billy Corgan that fans have come to know and love over the last three decades both with and without the Smashing Pumpkins (although Corgan and guitarist James Iha technically formed the band and began performing together in 1988). Described on the official Eventbrite page as “a unique and intimate evening of story and song,” the two weekends made good on their promise of exploring Corgan’s “early years as a musician and songwriter with music written between 1985-1990 when he was a fledgling arti...
Smashing Pumpkins Announce Live at the Viper Room 1998 Vinyl
Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins took to Instagram today to announce the upcoming arrival of their newest live vinyl, Live at the Viper Room 1998. “The thing you hear in the Viper Room show is you’re really sort of being allowed into the studio where the songs don’t have the accouterment of all the bells and whistles,” Corgan said in the Instagram clip. Continuing, Corgan said, “There’s a certain innocence before songs are released to the world.” Pre-order of the vinyl is available exclusively through Madame ZuZu’s site (Corgan’s plant-based tea shop) on July 31. A couple of months back, Smashing Pumpkins shared their first archival release, Live in Japan, 1992 LP in an incredibly limited way. It was also available on Madame Zuzu’s site but for 24 hours only. The May release was part ...
The 100 Greatest Rock Stars Since That Was A Thing
Three of the 100 are in this picture! The Rolling Stones, in 1964, from left to right: Bill Wyman, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Brian Jones. The problem with lists like this is they are invariably bullshit. So our prime objective was to make sure we didn’t do a bullshit list. I’m not saying we did a scientific one either. Because that isn’t possible — actually, it is, if you wanted some compilation of who sold the most records/concert tickets/has the most fans/got the most death threats, etc., and someone could come up with a bunch of very empirical metrics and create a “heat index” or something, and could deliver an actual scientific ranking! But we, um, didn’t do that. In fact we didn’t even, technically, do the “we...
Smashing Pumpkins: Our 1991 Feature
This article was originally published in the December 1991 issue of SPIN. Smashing Pumpkins were one of our Artist of the Year runner-ups. In honor of Gish turning 30, we’re republishing this article. With its simultaneously childlike and ferocious debut album, gish (Caroline Records), the Chicago-based hard-soft psychedelia foursome Smashing Pumpkins exploded onto the 1991 indie-rock landscape with all the messy orange furor of its namesake. Even though the group disavowed any overt connections to Halloween or related vandalisms, the trick-or-treat dichotomy has proven to be a recurring theme during the Pumpkins’ short but illustrious career. Singer-guitarist-mastermind Billy Corgan, guitarist James lha, bassist D’Arcy Wretzky, and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin thrive on co...
Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan on Gish Influencing Pearl Jam and Nirvana
Billy Corgan is only too happy to talk about the influence the Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish LP — 30 years old this year — had on the burgeoning alt-rock scene. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Corgan said, “I remember having a conversation with Eddie Vedder when we were on tour with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He told me how much of an influence Gish was on their first record.” Others, too, were fans of the Chicago foursome, Corgan said. “Through the years, I’ve talked to many, many people who really pointed to Gish as the game-changer in their mind about how to approach guitar and how to record.” Gish, produced by Butch Vig and Corgan in 1990-1991, “had a lot to do with how Nevermind was recorded,” Corgan says. Vig produced that album for Nirvana, also in 1990-1991. ...
Smashing Pumpkins Celebrate 30th Anniversary of Gish With Livestream Event and Chicago Collaborations
Six months after releasing their latest double album, CYR, Smashing Pumpkins are back with a throwback to the very beginning of the band. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of their groundbreaking debut album, Gish, Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin will be hosting a two-hour livestream on Saturday, May 29. The livestream will feature a Q&A, Gish listening party, and an exclusive preview of unreleased music. With any luck, that unreleased music will be a tease of the upcoming 80-track Machina II rework that Corgan mentioned in January. The legendary band is further embracing the digital age by encouraging fans to share their favorite Gish memories online and hosting a digital scavenger hunt on their social media platforms, which will see the winner rec...
AFI Release Two New Songs and Video for ‘Dulcería,’ Co-Written by Billy Corgan
Bodies might not be out for another couple of months, but that’s not stopping AFI from releasing yet another pair of new songs, as they did in January and February. The rock icons released both “Dulcería” and “Far Too Near” late Thursday night (or Friday morning, depending on where you live) with a brand new video for the former. Check out the video for “Dulcería” below. [embedded content] But perhaps the most noteworthy thing about “Dulcería” isn’t the video, but the collaborator that lifelong musical partners Davey Havok and Jade Puget brought in to help the band. Co-written by Billy Corgan, the track is basically a Noel Gallagher appearance short of the Smashing Pumpkins’ 2019 tour. “Billy and I have a great creative connection when we’re writing together,” Puget said in a statemen...
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