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this is special ladies and gentlemen because you know I'm sitting in front of three members of one of my favorite creative experiences bands whatever you want to call it of all time but you know the fact that I've got the three of you
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sitting in front of me here right now is Smashing Pumpkins and out on a sold-out tour and with an amazing sounding you are ready to go as well it makes you realize that you know life is a funny thing and if you hang in there long
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enough you know you just might get that feeling back and when I listen to the album for the first time last night I got that strange you know and it's nerve-wracking when you hear new music from people you really adore especially as life goes on mmm because we all know
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that things are finite even inspiration I think when you're young it you know everything's flying so fast you don't realize when you're doing magical things how actually magical they are and then when you don't have the magic and you
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become aware and then people asking you why what happened to the magic and it depends on who's in the room obviously and and like even I was just listening to the new Alice in Chains record and I have that feeling you know it's I love
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them so much and and I love Jerry songwriting it's like and it's like you're almost afraid to put the needle down because you want it to be as good as you know they can be how many artists in your life really going down the line
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quick question how many artists have never let you down I think they all do but I think that's that's life and I think I think you know it says more about the simulation of wanting you know perfect pop forever then then accepting
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that things happen circumstances change and you did it you hung in there yeah gotta hang in there that's the thing yeah I go that's this sort of and I appreciate you kind of dive in it that's kind of where we're at you know people like the click bass stuff but the
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reality is is like I mean I have this moment and not to put James on the spot I had this moment when we were working at Rick Rubin's on the music that you heard and I looked across the room and I just had this sensory wave memory of
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like being in the my dad's house with with James and just this relationship that goes back now 31 years it just blows my mind that here we are we're still playing guitars and we're still like little kids chasing the you know the riff or something it's
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it's crazy it's like it's beyond my conception let me ask a tough question because we can do we gonna bro yes we're gonna throw it down but I'm but I'm interested because the um you know the the Billy the human being sitting before
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me right here who's listening to myth no the person Tamara no even though I know when you put the hoodie on it's like right is a little myth Dec in the room today but the Billy Corgan the writer the artist the band member who's sitting there listening to your idea or your
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songs or your or your vision and and that's always nerve-racking no matter where you are in life to share those ideas it can be is it the same Billy Corgan that would listen to James's ideas when you were getting songs away
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on Siamese Dream and Marilyn calling the infinite sadness or are you a different kind of collaborate and now he more generous I'm saying I'm ruthless no he's still brutal I mean I I think I brought in six ideas and and you know with with
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with the hopes a you know one of them would be something that we could work on together but yeah I had no expectations other than you know brutal honesty I mean and he you know I mean that's the way we are with music across the board I
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mean he's he gets the same from us that we get from him so you know the litmus test doesn't change band member to ban them I think if that's where we're a good unit because maybe because we started with nothing we have that honesty with each other and not to this
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is meant to be funny but I mean you know you think I'm bad as a censor I mean try dealing with Rick Rubin I mean Rick if he doesn't like something there's no like well that could be good it's either yes or no I mean with Rick on songs it's like Nero
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thumbs up or thumbs down that's it yeah so we're sitting there preparing this music and I'm thinking the back of my head I know what Rick's like so what makes you great because no seriously because I because I've been a pumpkins
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fan from day one and I've and I've been right or die and of us into every single incarnation of the band all the way through and it hasn't been a linear ride you know not designed to be which is which is one thing that people don't
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understand about the band elaborate please well I'll be really I'll be obvious and then if you want to dive in deeper we made issue at the time was the biggest-selling independent album of all time we followed it up with Siamese Dream
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pissed off all the Gish fans that we had just won over in clubs and theaters it wasn't quote-unquote alt or grunge or whatever war thing froggy or psychedelic enough it was too poppy and then Siamese Dream went on to sell four million
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copies was a huge album made us an international band and what we follow up with a with a way darker sprawling double album which kind of went the complete other Dark Side of the Moon of the record we just made so we were never designed to stick in any one spot we
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weren't we weren't a we were in a heat-seeking missile that once it found his target we were gonna reap the benefits you know they said oh yeah well we love those bands I mean point is we're incapable of being that kind of
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band so when people would ask us to return to a kind of a familiar strain it's like antithetical to our DNA it's just not who we are especially when you made music for the in the first place probably and I'm assuming yet that because you felt like
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outsiders and then in some regard oh you didn't feel like you fit in so then yeah then all of a sudden you're fitting in and everyone's looking to you for answers not only do we not fit into normal American culture we didn't fit
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into the into the into the glitterati intelligentsia you know we'd go interview with the enemy and they make fun of us we interview with the New York Times and they'd make fun of us we'd interview with the Village Voice and they'd make fun of us and we were like
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we're literally DIY musicians who wrote around in a van and this is the music we choose to play and somehow it wasn't right indie enough or it wasn't cool enough and and that steeled us to be a completely contrarian unit we already
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kind of were anyway and then just naturally that way but it made us like now we were sort of angry oh man I you know there's this footage and people who are listening to this or watching this should go watch footage of you guys when
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it was all clicking into place which was the European Festival tour on siamese dream when you were playing man I mean you guys were going on at like probably four o'clock yeah yeah and just burn the house down King destroying everything I mean and
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playing fast and furious and just can like alright you guys think that we have we're idiots you think that we don't understand what's going on here well this is how we'll respond yeah it's just like and it would look like it's gonna
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spiral out of control and it just go it did sometimes yeah if we took the times we took them we took the garage mandate and we kind of blew right past it and we turn it into more of a meta mandate yeah which is like you know you've got this you've got
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this you've got this generation of people it's easy to talk about now at the time it was all felt through yeah you've got this generation of people who want to be unleashed yeah this is a generation that was coming out of a very repressed time yes
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people did not talk about sexual abuse in public people did not talk about a lot of other stuff in public so we were the first generation that was bringing this stuff into the mainframe in the mainframe was very uncomfortable with
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how anarchic it was and then we would walk on stage and play literally for 60,000 people in a mosh pit just losing their mind and singing every word the puking belligerence of it man turned into musicality and it's just like that's that discipline of that and the
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apathy OSIS of it all was Lollapalooza in 94 which is kind of what has sent us careening into The Melancholy album because there we were right we're headlining the festival and originally in a listen I forget it were supposed to
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be Nirvana pumpkins beasties you know and obviously that didn't happen so okay we're headlining what became at the time what way is historically it's the biggest Lollapalooza ever and there they are there are the same football players
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that used to bully us in the in the hallways and there they are right every other band in my estimation and I don't mean the throw shade this is the way I read it at the time because this is the mindset I was in everybody was cool with
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going along to get along because it was a wave right let's just ride this wave yeah I looked at it as like no you're the enemy and we are here to take you on and to this day I still have people welcoming here Kurt's going man I don't know what that was about
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there are people to this day and I again I usually meet them in airports who refused to ever see the band or listen to the band after that show you're talking about forty to forty three shows one was canceled due to rain yeah so 42
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times I took the mic and went after that audience yeah and and I mean I mean you're talking about turning off tens of thousands of people but I didn't care and I by extension I assumed we didn't care I can't speak for everybody but that was
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the assumption James how did you feel at the time I don't remember that billion James and Jimmy Ahijah might and for as long as I can keep him and I appreciate these moments that I have with with you guys as we go on in life you know it's
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good 20 plus years now let me talking to this guy see same bad attitude different millennia being out on tour and doing this thing standing question but I but always a unique answer you know being family men now and having different
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priorities and going out and touring all those things appreciate it more to more difficult to balance how do you balance the emotion and you do different people than you were in 94 even 2000 it's taken family and it's taken time and it's
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taken reflection and time apart to really understand what we actually have so to be able to share that again in a sort of a warm way and not a weaponized way is really really cool and and I think people were really picking up on that because they knew that was
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there and like you said you have this emotional connection of the work the people who really listen to the band and I'm not just talking about the you know the rat and the cage stuff the people who really listen the band really went
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deep with their work no there's a real warmth in the band I mean we have such a greater understanding of what we got right what we got wrong how we cannot repeat those mistakes and what we really owe each other in terms of sort of a
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spiritual debt you know the moment james iha walked in my life changed my life forever at the moment jimmy walked and her life changed your lives forever it doesn't mean every day was perfect and we held hands and saying around the
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campfire but somehow in the midst of whatever our own individual and collective chaos we were able to make these diamonds that is the shared thing it's not just shared between us we we optimize those out so that someone like you from another country with a
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completely different culture and a completely different background google man there's something there and we could sit in this room and we can talk about those things for hours and we all sort of at the end of they still kind of scratch
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because we don't even really know what we did right yeah look you've you've navigated through this next subject beautifully and very respectfully but I haven't asked the question and I haven't been able to talk to you about it and and and and you know I'm a fan and I
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would love to not LaSalle tomorrow what did you have for breakfast insert joke question here you know someone is missing although jeff has been in the band for how long now 12 years what is that the longest time almost is that the
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longest straight run well the original band before we sort of blew apart at least in whatever conception that was was 14 so close yeah Jeff's almost og length almost og length this unit would not be sitting here without Jeff people have no
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understanding of how Jeff has held this thing together behind the scenes he is a rock we are so grateful to Jeff and he killin it every night oh my god so respect to Jeff we love Jeff any fans now recognized that Jeff is really a
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member of the Smashing Pumpkins and has little time um and and yet there is that initial chemistry in that moment in time where there were four of you and one was Darcy and she played an instrumental role in those really albums and there
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was all that talk and and it's not really about going over all the like why didn't it happen stuff it's more like now it's happened now you are playing live it's it is different it's not the same and it would have been beautiful if
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it could have been because you will look fantastic you've all still got you here well most of you and the new album is incredible and it would have been very special if it could have happened it would have been different I mean you know but it just didn't work out I mean
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to be simple about it you know let me if if I could jump in here I was the I was the point person on communicating with her I spent literally two years rebuilding our relationship albeit a distance I could never get her in the room hmm
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and I felt very very good and communicated that to James and Jimmy that I felt there was an opportunity there I couldn't say what that opportunity was but the goal was to see the four of us on a stage and I was cool if it was gonna be one
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song or a whole show and the whole thing broke down when we had to start talking about time and reality and opportunity and of course the business part of it all and and there was a there was a wide wide gap between what I thought was a
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reasonable expectation of ability given that she hadn't been on stage in 19 years but she suffered from incredible stage anxiety I mean we're talking like a ten out of ten and and that was that was part of the equation always so when you saw her on a stage
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she was inwardly going through a lot more than you would have you would have thought because her state her station Weiner was very icy he was to call her ice queen that was a cool nickname that fans gave her the ice queen but inside
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there was a lot of inner and her stuff going on and and anyone try not to say too much because again I'm not trying to make it about that so when I started trying to have a real conversation about look here's the shows here's what we want to do here's the
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pressures involved you know what would be a reasonable expectation for you to enter in time in on the different difference between what I saw was a very sympathetic and empathetic opportunity was no it has to be like this okay now
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we're back into the person I dealt with back in the day I'm not that person anymore but now I'm dealing with the person I left off with in 1999 right and the answer was no that's just not gonna happen and the reaction wasn't well
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let's get together in a room or let's play and let me show you that you're wrong it was no then the threat started then you know then the mendacity started you know and so then just became okay and then the last piece of information
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that's pertinent is that even after the bridge was blown up and it was blown up for good there was a back-channel communication through an intermediate ER can I still come back and and that just shows you the level of craziness hmm
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and I don't think I mean just to finish that thing I mean I don't think people realize that the gift that is this opportunity right I mean until you're kind of this close to it you know having been through you know I mean in the 90s
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I mean we were convinced that the music was born of self-destruction and self-deprecation and to come full circle and realize that the music is deep enough to be reroute it in compassion and grace and still be as effective it's pretty unbelievable let's see the sweat
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starting engine but this is what he's saying and and this is the sort of bigger wraparound on the situation about Darcy is Jimmy used to say it very very well and I didn't always understand what he meant at a deep level and now I do
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the music was greater than we were where the ego gets in it's like well I wrote that song or we wrote that song or I played that part no no the music is that is is the thing that like is so beyond a musician's conception of you've
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understanding which you've done right and you can sit there all day and sit it in sitting your big throne and have somebody come in kiss your ring and tell you how great it was that you did something in 1997 or whatever and you
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can live on that for a long time I mean this town lala land is full of that hmm but the real blessing of the music is it will eventually guide you home so all those things I sang about we open the show with with disarm and and I conceived it in my mind and and and so
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my partner in in making of the show Linda strawberry I did this thing where I got all these photos my grandmother had died a few years ago so I got all these photos I'd never seen in myself as a child and I and I drew on the photos
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and so in real time you can see me drawing on those photos it sounds very simple and it's just footage of me some some home footage and and and pictures of me as a child I literally can't watch the footage of myself and it's just pictures of me and and
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because it triggers these memories in me that are so intense even to this day and as a father and as parent knowest oh how can I stand there and and sing this song that I wrote when I was twenty five on the brink of suicide literally
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considering and I can see the window I kept thinking about throwing myself out of and where I would land on the sidewalk and I remember even one time being so high on mushrooms I was thought well this is a perfect time because it won't hurt to have written that song
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when I didn't even know what the hell I was saying and to stand on stage 26 years later and sing that song in front of images of the kid that I wrote about and know that he went through something that I can't even contemplate that that
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song that I shared and and was was blessed with my bandmates poured on because they could have said odds-on forget about it all those all that all chemical process that led to that moment to stand on the stage 26 years later how
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can I sing that song true if I actually haven't moved on the gift is the person in the audience who goes my god he gout he got beyond that not only was he able to talk about it but he was able to move past it and every day I get messages on Instagram four people are
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saying you don't understand of course I do understand but I know what they mean you don't understand just seeing you guys together laughing smiling playing your music your way no compromise on the biggest stages in the world if so
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inspiring to me because it tells me I can do the same that is the promise of the band that we didn't even know we were getting into when we did it huh all we wanted to do was kick the ass of all the other all bands you know how's
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the book going uh I would keep I keep coming back around to it well I mean I thought I knew what the ending was gonna be you know and and now I have to write a totally different ending and that's part of the problem is I don't it's I'm
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actually thinking about restarting it and just because in the beginning I was going to write it out of sequence because I wanted to I wanted to address the disassociative feeling of it's a weird combo but sort of child abuse leading into fame is every stage
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of my life was so disassociative I actually wanted to make the reader feel the disassociative part of it but now I'm actually thinking the best thing to do is just sort of write 0 to 18 book hmm like the book to the day I met James
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or something like lead up to there and then stop and then the next book would be taking it from there and go go through like melancholy or something I think I think that's probably a little bit more realistic at this point how can
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i how have you have you done this how have you gotten to a point in your life where you can be a father and confident you have the tools and the experience to be able to raise another another human be honest ok that's actually a very fair
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point because as a father I will feel as a parent we all feel that that flat date I mean it's up to them or they want to talk about but I literally sit and pick their brains on parenting I literally say how do I deal with this I don't I
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don't know what I'm doing doing here you know my son is highly intelligent and as a corrigan he's out of his mind so you know and sometimes I just face challenges that I'm not prepared for and I certainly don't have the parenting example I mean my best parenting
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examples came from 70s television I've interviewed you in spoken to have throughout and um and seen you in all kinds of different Annie when I look before I lost my mind that's right and there's definitely been moments when you have and we all go through that how
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really when you look back on it now what are some of the key components for other people who are listening to this who listen to your music and probably thought that you know the the it making all consumed me the whole experience
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life everything around you just you just may end up being a victim of it and you're not you're sitting here right now yeah you got your hoodie over your head and you look like the same Billy Corgan where you know exactly but you're a dad
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you got your friends around you you're playing sold-out arenas you got a brand new album which is king amazing and how if you could contextualize it how did you get here how did you make it oh gosh that's a that's a good one well let's
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work backwards because that's easiest for me number one is friendship our friendship as is deep you know we're not always good friends to each other but our friendship is really deep and so that's what I think that's what you see on
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stage the music the fact that fans have continued to support the music and stuck with me through the various iterations has really encouraged me and even in many ways made me sort of try to understand the perspective like he would
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say like why can't you just get back together and play it's like yeah it's not so easy right even one time I remember running as Steven Tyler Aerosmith an elevator and he said he ever gonna get back together with me and I said no chance he goes you will and
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then he got off the elevator as only Steven Tyler could very beautifully by the way love on an elevator yes and I only promise I wasn't going down it was going up it's kind of is it is a little bit of marketing here we finally
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resolved our difference with Universal who now owns all the copyrights on the on the band's nineties records and so machinae which was our last album for virgin hasn't gotten the box that reissued treatment so we're finally gonna be able to do that because we
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finally resolved our legal differences and and that album was was was written around the beginning of what became a very onerous and complicated spiritual journey which I which really is the main reason I want to write the book I really
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want to take people through the inner workings of that spiritual journey and yeah I mean it's easy to sit here and say God and and and God is such a triggering word for so many people and people think they know what it means and
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they don't know what it means or they think they know what I mean when I say it but something about saying okay there's got to be some greater thing I didn't feel I was the greatest force in the universe and I didn't know anybody
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white who I held in higher estimation than myself and I held myself in low esteem strange as that equation sounds so I thought I'm gonna try to at least attach myself to a consciousness or an idea that is greater than myself even if
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it's not real so that it will help me organize my my life and my thinking around something that's a little bit more principled and not so material or ego or insecurity based because that combination the material ego and security thing is why you get a
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lot of crazy interviews and mmm you know you roll out of bed on the wrong day and somebody just rubs you the wrong way the album is coming how many songs on the record eight and now I know this and I had just like to be a disclaimer in here
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somewhere but carry on okay well no because when I figure out the record listen to a last thought I was like did they send me half of it I did three songs missing the force I was missing and it makes perfect sense now because more people do that but never snow no
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pumpkins right yeah here's the disclaimer go we went into the village out here for three weeks and did 16 song demos in three weeks no I just said that sorry and with the idea that Rick Rubin would pick one song and we would do that to announce the
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tour so once we finished the 16 demos we picked the wood in our estimation was the eight best songs and then I went to Rick's house and I played Rick the eighth best songs hoping he would like one and even be worried he wouldn't even
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like one because that's the way where it can be he liked all eight mmm then he immediately wanted to go over to the studio and hear the other eight that we didn't want to play him which I was reluctant play and he changed his mind
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on one so he took one out of the B pile and putting a pound took one of a pump with beep oh so next thing you know we go from what we're just gonna be in LA doing this one song to now we're doing eight songs we did eight songs in four
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weeks which for us is absolute light speed yeah I used to do four weeks for one song yeah so we got thrown in the cauldron of the experience it was great it turned out great we're very happy with the result obviously but then we
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found herself in a situation now we got eight songs and we don't know what to do with it and it's not an album there's no conceptual binding other than Rick like these eight songs and we were like cool let's just do those eight songs so I
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look at it more almost like a Pisces iscariot mixtape record of you just take a bunch of songs and you put it together on a mixtape and it kind of makes a vibe so it's not it's not really an album in the in the siamese machine a sense of
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the word where there's a conceptual basis more just like the mixtapes well relief for you guys to some degree to not have to burden yourself as fun as it can be with that whole thing of like alright I've got a kind of presenters it's a relief for them yeah yeah yeah
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too because when I go there I mean we go we go deep we go deep into the conceptual base as as some people realize yeah absolutely I mean machinae was what eight months work melancholy eight months siamese was what about the rest of the songs sorry
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to be I guess I was selfish what do mean the other 8 yeah I don't know we haven't gone back to him yet right because we're always gonna go was if you've got another 8 songs and maybe going to another 4 songs or whatever we move in a
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different pace now a time way ok I'm gonna answer the question in lightning-round fashion the plan is to when we can sit down sort of sort of pickpockets next year we'll work with the idea that we want to keep releasing music that way it could be a single it
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can be an EP whatever we want to go back to what what was our early approach was to be somewhat casual about releasing music or the b-sides like let's call it the fun version not good too uptight version of the band I know certainly
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without talking out of school that they like that approach a lot better than the other approach and I don't blame them that said my deeper interest is I'd like for us to do one more kind of Grande work so I'm still percolating on how to
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do that in an effective way that is respectful of their time and also whether or not there will be an audience there to want to listen to what it's done so technically speaking this work that's coming out is is is sort of
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waiting into that pool even though it doesn't seem like it because ultimately some of that work may end up in this larger work I know since it doesn't it being on some of these casual releases doesn't mean it won't end up in this
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like greater opera that I want to write for the band I do want to write one more of those because let's face it you know we wrote many of those the the most obvious being melancholy infinite sadness and not only is it a hugely influential record it's one of the
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best-selling records of all time so it's not like we weren't rewarded when we really went there and we went there well hmm so we do have a history with why we would want to do bad a bat out of hell - I'm so glad one other thing and now that
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I'm really excited by the the rear eyes of the vinyl record shop and the fact that there is this sort of beautiful balance now between vinyl releases and streaming services we're gonna start just unloading the archives and we have
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we have archives for decades how much stuff have I never heard you can't even imagine hundreds of songs you can't even imagine in various states finished well it's it's insane how much work there is there's so much work it'sit's we could
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literally never record another song and we could have a release every two months for the next 20 years easy there's alternate versions there's live versions there's acoustic versions so we're gonna we're gonna absolutely kill people with content no matter smoothies
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no amount of Parenthood no amount of God or therapy friendship or just really I had to so I have to and appreciate your artistry oh well anything that could they could bring this environment together is ever gonna fully is that
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we're gonna fully change the nature of the man before me here when you say to me we're gonna kill them with content I think yeah right it's still a desire to go and kill something there in destroy and burn it all down to the ground well
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you gotta remember and you know they know my father very well I you know that Apple fell from that tree we just wanted you to be okay we're okay we've survived thank you so much for like delivering on this record oh thank you that's great
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endorsement you really have and can't wait to play every song off it and can't wait to see all the shows and all the things to come and in here's to the second half your life and thanks again for your time love you guys anything so thank you