Smashing Pumkpkins
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...
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 ...
