Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan recently covered the Alice In Chains classic “Check My Brain” at the band’s MoPOP tribute show.
Corgan performed with Alice In Chains in 2006, and recently discussed that performance on Instagram. Corgan said, “I think one of my favorite times being around Jerry was visiting his house so we could figure out what song I was gonna play with AIC live (circa 2006?).”
Billy recently told Q about his portrayal in the medai, “I don’t know… Pick your… Crazy, insane, tyrant — a lot of things. Now, are some of those things aspects of my character? I can say so. But I don’t think you can be a successful artist for 30 years if you’re insane. Clickbait articles — a lot of stuff like that. So I found that by doing my own media and talking to those people that are engaged with me every day, they kind of surreptitiously become part of the story and correcting the record and creating a narrative, which we live in a world of narratives. You only have to look at the political sphere to understand how narratives are incredibly important to how people come to their decisions. By creating a more positive narrative around myself in communion with those people who really support me on a daily basis, we can tell a different story.
“I grew up in a time where you had to talk to The New York Times, you had to talk to Spin or whoever, and if they hit you upside the head, you had to take it, because you needed those people to tell people that you had a new record out,” he continued. “Now we live in a time where you don’t really those people, and the rules around that type of engagement is changing. And so I think by doing your own media and commincating directly and being willing to be an imperfect person, which I am — ’cause I can be petty and I can be silly in equal parts — people come to their own decision about who you are and they come to their own decision about whether or not they wanna be loyal to your cause. It doesn’t always work — I would say it only works eight times out of 10. But the eight times out of 10 it works, I think it’s been a positive boon to what we’re trying to accomplish here.
“It’s a musical business here — we run a musical business,” Corgan added. “We don’t run a drama business, we don’t run a clickbait business — we run a music business. We write songs and we produce records and we do concerts. And as long as people are supportive of that, we get to do more of that. That’s all we’ve ever asked for.”
