Billy Corgan
Billy Corgan
William Patrick "Billy" Corgan Jr. is an American musician, songwriter, producer, television writer, poet, and professional wrestling promoter best known as the lead singer, guitarist, and sole permanent member of The Smashing Pumpkins. Formed by Corgan and guitarist James Iha in Chicago, Illinois, in 1987, the band quickly gained steam with the addition of bassist D'arcy Wretzky and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin. The band's direction has largely been driven by Corgan through his confessional lyrics, grandiose production values, and virtuosic musical...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth17 March 1967
CityElk Grove Village, IL
CountryUnited States of America
Every year that goes by, I lose that much more motivation to play rock.
I never seemed to fit in. But it made me try to strive for things ten times harder.
My view of the world is always tempered by the fact that there are people who are less fortunate than I am.
We have a problem with any labels that people try to hang on us, because all it does is drag you down.
Smashing Pumpkins has never been a band about hit songs.
If there was a simple ethic for the band, it was that we want to be able to do whatever we want to do.
To re-embrace what I once loved about music has been a warming process for me, because it's a good, earned feeling now.
The things I'm guided to do are really strange to me.
In my particular instance, I came from a family that didn't have anything. Everything I earned in life I made. Myself. With songs that I wrote.
That was a terrible Super Bowl, I have to say. I mean you got the big Peyton Manning walk off into the sunset win, but what a shnoozo.
More than any audience in the world, Americans will cross their arms, stare at you and say, 'OK, whaddya got?' - no matter how many times you've proven it to them.
I met Scott Stapp when the band was first coming up, great guy. I haven't seen him for years, but a great guy.
I think when I listen to old records, it puts me back in the atmosphere of what it felt like to make the record and who was there and what the room looked like. It's more a sensory memory.
I mean there's certainly a lot of progressive rock and metal that exists at the underground level, which has its own vitality, as it should. But it seems to have lost its ability to really charge up the hill.