Alternative Nation published our interview with original Smashing Pumpkins bassist D’arcy Wretzky last week, but the interview was edited down so we could have a concise piece. Our conversation with D’arcy actually lasted for nearly four hours, and here are some stories D’arcy told that didn’t fit into the interview article. D’arcy discussed having an idea to have cello featured on a song in the 90’s, and Billy Corgan initially turning it down but then wanting to do it two years later.
“Most of the time he’s not listening, he’s not paying attention, and it always drove me crazy. ‘Billy, this song would be really great with a cello in it.’ He likes, ‘What are you crazy!? Where are we going to get a cellist from?’ A few years later [he says]: ‘You know, this song would be great with a cellist on it.’ I’m like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ He’s like, ‘What?’ James [Iha] is like, ‘D’arcy suggested that two years ago.’
He just laughs it off, and I wanted to punch him in the face. I almost beat him upside the head with boards a couple times. We were very close, our first tour when he decided to blame me for not getting a spare tire, when we got a flat tire on the van. He was screaming, he could throw the biggest tantrum, and he would always threaten to quit. Jimmy didn’t give a shit, and James would never stand up to him.”
She also discussed a text message exchange where Corgan proposed she sing “Daydream” on the Shiny and Oh So Bright tour if her rotator cuff injury didn’t heal in time, even though D’arcy told Corgan doctors told her she would be fine to play the tour and it wouldn’t interfere at all.
“Billy was hoping that, he’s thinking I can’t play. I can play now, and the doctors told me I can play now, there’s just certain movements, and I’m much better now already. That’s when he said, ‘It would mean a lot to a lot of the fans if you were up on stage every night, even if you can’t play due to your shoulder stuff, you certainly can sing Daydream and participate in other ways.’
There’s one of the carrots, because he never would let me sing Daydream, because people were always screaming for me to sing that, and it drove him nuts. Finally one night he says, ‘Well what if she doesn’t want to sing it?’ I glared at him, and when we got off stage I was like, ‘If you ever fucking speak for me again and tell people I don’t want to sing, I will quit. I will walk off, and I will quit right there.’ Asshole.”
She later said, “He used to use my voice, after Daydream he didn’t let me sing another song. He was so jealous he wouldn’t let me sing another song again. That wasn’t the way that it was going to be, I was going to sing more than that. Even when I would sing on other stuff, he wouldn’t use effects on his voice, he would use my voice as an effect for his voice, and turn it down so much and make me match his singing.”
“He even took it to the point where in the 1979 video, he wouldn’t even let me have a microphone in front of me and sing on the video. We got into it.”
D’arcy discussed how she hadn’t paid attention to rock music in several years. She said she loved John Frusciante, but she didn’t even know that he had left the Red Hot Chili Peppers again 10 years ago. She said she’s starting to follow more things in rock music now again, as she commented on an Alternative Nation article a few weeks ago.
“Every time I see [Billy] now I cringe, it’s so weird. I feel like fucking Rip Van Winkle or something, I look at these [rock music] people, I’ve just started to slowly get back into it, and I see people, and I’m like (gasps) what happened to them? Everybody is old, but I’m still the same. Mostly my face looks different, because it changes if you gain weight. I was 5’9 and weighed 118 pounds, that’s a little bit too thin. I weigh more now, my face has changed.”
