While Billy Corgan and D’arcy Wretzky have been embroiled in a feud over the last few months over Corgan only offering her a guest role on The Shiny and Oh So Bright tour and choosing Jack Bates over her to play bass, Corgan praised D’arcy’s contributions during his songwriting process in a new interview with Lars Ulrich on It’s Electric! Alternative Nation transcribed Corgan’s comments.
“What I would always tell people, and it’s hard to explain these things in literal terms, was she had a very high discernment for the material. So if she didn’t kind of sign off on it, it probably wasn’t as good. So I would spend a lot of time just looking at her, and looking for raised eyebrows. I learned to kind of gage her reaction. She’s the type of person where you could go, ‘Oh, I like whatever is the popular thing.’
She’d be totally dismissive, very punk rock. To her, if something didn’t have an internal integrity, it was worthless, like a punk rock outlier or something. When the band was at its most functional with the four of us, that’s what I looked to her for.
As far as musical stuff, it was always a bit of a struggle, because she saw music as more of a lifestyle thing like: ‘I play when I want to play. I’ll show up when I have to.’ Where I ate, slept, died music 24 hours a day. I took drugs to listen to music, not just to take drugs, but because I wanted to learn more.
Then we’d come off a tour, and you could tell she hadn’t pick up a bass for two weeks. It was different lanes of commitment in my mind, but I’m more appreciative as time has gone by that everybody approaches music completely differently.”
