Billy Corgan discussed Kurt Cobain in a new Zane Lowe interview on Apple Music, via Consequence.
“I want the Smashing Pumpkins standing on the top of the heap of our generation. If that means I got to write 800 songs to do it, I’ll do it. I ain’t shy about that. I will go down always as saying, Kurt was the most talented guy of our generation.
Kurt had so much talent. It’s like frightening. It was like a John Lennon level of talent, where you’re like, ‘How can you have all this talent?’ Or Prince, right? But Kurt’s not here, sadly. So I looked around, I was like, ‘All right, well, I could beat the rest of them for sure.'”
“When Kurt died, I cried because I lost my greatest opponent. I want to beat the best. I don’t want to win the championship because it’s just me and a bunch of gabronis, to use a wrestling term.
“It’s like, Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest sports competitor I’ll ever see in my lifetime — I mean, you want to talk about an alpha. That guy wanted to win the valet tip. You know what I mean?”
He said “the real deal” is Chino Moreno, and Radiohead “figured out the world that was coming pretty much before every band on the planet”. Corgan gave advice to U2 for “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” in 2000.
“So, I’m over in Dublin, circa 2000, and I go to visit Bono at his house. We stayed up all night, and in the morning, for some reason, me and him are the only people up, and he says, ‘I want to play you something. We’re going to have to go out in the car, because I don’t want to wake the house up.’
“So it’s me and him freezing in the driveway, and he pops in and he’s playing me what became the ‘It’s a Beautiful Day’ album, and it’s not all the way there, but sort of there. And he goes, ‘Tell me honestly what you think.’ I’m like, ‘You really want me to give you my opinion?’ And I told him what I thought, and they actually used my advice, and he let me know later, ‘Hey, we used your advice.'”
