Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan was asked if he’s considered covering Nirvana in Seattle in honor of Kurt Cobain. The Pumpkins have covered Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, and David Bowie on The Shiny and Oh So Bright tour.
Have you ever thought about doing a Nirvana cover? Maybe in Seattle?
“Of course. KC wrote many great songs.”
Did SP start out playing cover songs or did you guys start playing your original work?
“Always played covers. Despise people who complain about us playing covers. Even now.”
Opinion of the Pixies?
“Great band. Without them, no Grunge revolution.”
What do you love most about Jimi Hendrix?
“Incredible visionary, fantastic songwriter, and probably best guitarist ever.”
Do you like Black Sabbath with Dio?
“Some of my fave music.”
Billy Corgan recently wrote about the ‘Gen X mission’ on his Instagram page.
“If you read this message till the end, you’ll seen I’ve shared some private communication with someone who wrote me a very nice message; which spontaneously inspired my response. Presented to you without censor, save for where I might point my headress in the attached sketch and how my mentioning so (for those in the know) would create some pretty robust clickbait. But we’ll save that for another day…
One small detail. I tried attaching screen caps of my message to this person, but I just couldn’t make it work. Which undermines my position as someone to listen to, I suppose. That’s also a joke for those in the know. So read on if you’ve been following what I like to call ‘spiritually-themed’ posts. The response, again, has been humbling. -DM to a friend- (finger pointing down emoji here)
Somewhere along the way, in the early 90’s, when I noticed this heavy connection with what I was singing, and how I was portraying myself thru media, I took a lot of people, myself included, on a strange trip. And there were many days and years even(?) where I wondered ‘what the hell am I doing?’ And God or intuition or my cracked mind just kept saying ‘hang in there, there’s a point to all this’ strange combination of projection, self-immolation, negation, and so on; as if I was taking something beautiful but also sort of dreamy/not real and dismantling it so that (hopefully) I could build something or someone real that wasn’t crippled by pain or memory but that could celebrate life. And here we collectively are, and I’m not even sure what the number of the we is that is left; but obviously it’s significant enough to mount this tour. And the we are parents, and business owners now (this collective of us), and many are half asleep with propaganda yet need to be roused to act; not in my self-interest but in their own, to make this world true (if that’s even possible?). This is the Gen X mission, convoluted as that mantle is; to break and create anew. And hopefully we’ve got one more act in us (like a play, a 2nd act) -end-.”
