Billy Corgan has insulted Smashing Pumpkins members over the years, though he is currently on good terms and playing with Smashing Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and guitarist James Iha.
In 2009, Corgan unloaded on Chamberlin when firing him from the band. “Jimmy is a destructive human being, and people who are destructive break things,” Corgan said in a 2010 Rolling Stone interview. “I don’t see me reaching the highest levels of my creativity if I’m unhealthy and if I have unhealthy people around me.” After Corgan told Chamberlin he was out, Jimmy unloaded on him. Corgan remembered, “I was like, ‘Fuck you. Go ride around in a white van for the rest of your life.”
Jimmy Chamberlin told The Washington Post in a new interview that these insults are behind them now.
“We’re still here. In spite of all the pushing and shoving and punches and insults and things you do as young lions, we’ve had to put a lot of that stuff aside and look at the value of the relationships. We’re just different people now. I’m not the maniac I was back then. In 1995, I wouldn’t have wanted to hang around with that guy, and [Billy] probably wouldn’t want to hang around with the guy he was either.”
The writer brought up the feuds, including Corgan and D’arcy Wretzky trading blows in 2018 after the Smashing Pumpkins original lineup reunion fell apart, with D’arcy telling her side of the story in a February 2018 Alternative Nation interview.
With some distance, Billy Corgan has put these disagreements behind him according to the Washington Post. “The emotional stuff was always around personal things and disagreeing with who somebody was dating or something,” he says now. “It was getting in each other’s business when we probably should have stayed out of it.”
