In an internal Howard Stern staff meeting video leak from February 2013, Stern claimed that Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan was ‘off the radar’ before appearing on the show in 2012 when discussing the power of the show’s reach. In a slide that he showed to employees, he even took credit for The Smashing Pumpkins 2012 album Oceania being in the Billboard top 10. It’s important to note that Howard Stern has been very complimentary of Corgan in recent years as he’s appeared several times, so the sleight is moreso calling Corgan ‘off the radar’ pre-2012. Alternative Nation transcribed Stern’s comments:
“We need to spread the word vitally, we had a guy come in, who had something called the Ugly app. It was the dumbest, stupidest idea on the planet, and he walked out of our show, maybe not a millionaire but a hundred thousandaire. If that isn’t the greatest success story in the history of radio, I don’t know what is. Who the f**k knows about him?! Well the people in this room, does Madonna’s publicist know about it? Probably not. From now on we share all of our success with the world because we are gonna get the word out in 2013.”
He later said, “Billy Corgan’s album went into the top ten, he was off the radar until us. You know this, and this is fact. Billy Corgan was off the radar, he came on The Howard Stern Show, and he sold albums. How does every record company in the world not know about this? It’s because we aren’t telling them, we aren’t doing our jobs. People beg to get on Oprah’s show because they think she sells books, they think she sells records. Bullshit.
Yeah, great, in some demographics she does, but in the world of rock and roll, somebody puts out a rock book, a rock record, we are the place to go, and the publicists don’t think or care about us. Some do, but most don’t. We get the same results, but we don’t have a book club to track it.”
Anyone familiar with this ‘Billy Corgan’ guy? He’s not on my radar. from r/howardstern
