Marking three decades since the release of Smashing Pumpkins’ landmark 1995 album “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,” Billy Corgan reflected on the record in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times.
During the discussion, Corgan was asked about the themes of Smashing Pumpkins’ hit song “Bullet with Butterfly Wings,” specifically the pressure artists feel to put on a performance, even when they don’t feel like it – as implied by the line “Can you fake it for just one more show?”
When asked if those lyrics still resonate with him today, the frontman admitted that he still experiences moments of doubt and unease.
“Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because you work so hard to be on that stage and then, as Roger Waters so aptly describes in ‘The Wall,’ you find yourself having a surrealist experience on that same stage. You put yourself through hell to get there and then one day you’re standing there and you’re like, what am I doing here?” Corgan explained.
He continued, noting that fame is often not as glamorous as people think and can, in many ways, make life more complicated.
“I’ve had similar moments where I’m standing on stage and you feel like you’re tripping on drugs, but you’re totally sober. Because the thing that you love inverts on you,” Corgan said. “When I was a kid, I thought being on TV was a peak thing. But then I was there, about to perform on TV, and there were all these things going on, like you’re tired, or you’re being sued or your bandmate doesn’t like the deli tray. And I just thought, what am I doing here?
“I felt like I was living in ‘Spinal Tap.’ This is supposed to be fun. This is supposed to be glamorous. This is supposed to be a thousand other things that you put on the rock-star checklist and you find yourself saying, I don’t want to be here.”
“If you turn to your friends or your family and say, ‘I’m really struggling with how I’m supposed to process the information that I’m receiving up here,’ you’re told you’re ungrateful or you’re out of your mind or you really need to check your ego,” he added.
“I reached a point where it was like, no, I don’t have the skill set to survive punishing my mind, body, spirit five to six nights a week in front of strangers singing songs that are very personal to me and I hear the cheering and I see the flash bulbs popping, but I’m so numb that I can’t feel what’s happening. So in a lot of ways, that song and the themes from the album are still real.”
Last month marked 30 years since the release of Smashing Pumpkins’ iconic album “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.” Despite being three decades old, “Mellon Collie” is still as impactful as ever.
In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, frontman Billy Corgan reflected on why the record continues to resonate not only with Gen X, but also with young listeners who are just now discovering the album.
“I view that album in particular very much within the realm of a child who grows up in a latchkey situation,” Corgan told the publication. “It’s very much a Gen X term. Latchkey kids were those whose parents were working a lot or not home, so they grew up by and large unsupervised. So what does a kid who grows up unsupervised do? They watched a lot of television, and then we consumed a lot of sugar and got up to a lot of delinquent-type things.”
“So I think the album is very representative of that experience and I think why it continues to resonate for subsequent generations is, it’s very dissociative,” he continued. “Back in the ’90s, the mainstream culture, including the L.A. Times and the New York Times, they really struggled with, ‘Where’s this all coming from?’ Now you are living in a world that is constantly dissociative thanks to social media.
“The thing that’s surprising, I’m basing it on personal conversations I’ve had with tons of musicians through the years, is that our album gave some musicians the permission to pursue a wider artistic vision. Because ‘Mellon Collie’ is so wide. It has so much breadth. So what I’ve heard from other artists is, ‘Wow, when I heard that album, I thought, I can do this too, but in my own way.’ And that to me is like, that’s a penultimate compliment from another musician. It’s really humbling.”
“The greatest thrill now is seeing that young people really do connect with the record,” Corgan added. “And they connect with songs that are different from the previous generations, which is even cooler. They seem to like the weirder stuff on it rather than the … let’s call it, the classic rock alternative stuff.”
