Corgan to juggle Pumpkins, two new bands (!), and solo work; “shooting for 44 songs” and movie in new Pumpkins project 7:59 pm // Thursday, April 9, 2009
Posted by jjb in billy corgan, gish, jeff schroeder, news, releases, siamese dream, studio.trackback
Today’s “mission statement” from Billy Corgan may not have addressed the ending of his professional relationship with “life partner” Jimmy Chamberlin, but it did serve notice that Corgan’s musical ambitions remain massive. Also massive? The statement itself, weighing in at a Twitter-shaming 12,388 characters and covering an array of (other) topics.
Corgan, on his continuing use of the Smashing Pumpkins name:
There is a difference in how I think and approach a body of work for the Pumpkins then say I would as a solo artist or under any other name. Being the near lone songwriter for the Pumpkins has always made me want to put all the diverse harmonic fragments in my mind together, and it has been an incredible musical journey so far to keep trying to match up to the size of that idea… [W]hat the band represents to me and obviously to so many fans SYMBOLICALLY is what is really important in my opinion moving forward.
On his potential use of other names that presumably symbolize other things:
I have notions to start 2 other bands and also release some more solo work. I would love to get into more details on those projects but I would like to secure the domain names first because I don’t want to have to fight to get them back later.
On playing up different viewpoints or personas:
I don’t think there is anything inauthentic about my play-acting within those created personas (zero, the whyte spider, the sad guy, the vampyre, etc) and acting them out on the grand stage in front of the glare of whoever cares… I would point very gently to the diversity and complexity of my artistic work to give you some sense of who Billy Corgan really is (that is a joking 3rd person by the way). Part-alien, part-human, part-robot, part-star-crossed lover and part-mercury filled apparently if one was to read the songs in that way.
On…let’s call it ‘meme-generation’:
I think the energy in the Pumpkins community is fantastic right now. I love the diversity of opinion and perspective. There is nothing to argue about there. But at least there is something to argue over! Meaning SP is substantive once again; there are new songs, questionable decisions, abject failures, and unique triumphs to dissect over and over. Enjoy!
On other drummers:
Jeff and I will be holding the first round of auditions [on the 14th], with me on bass (lookout!).
As I stated earlier in this post we’ve just been rocking amongst friends, so for the moment Kerry Brown, my best man and co-producer is manning the skins. The past few days we had Daxx Nielsen [ed. son of Rick!] in to play on a few things, who is a great drummer himself.
On new Smashing Pumpkins material:
Right now we are just focused on about 5 or 6 songs, using them to try out some new feels to try to find a consistent foundation upon which to build this large multimedia project I have in mind. 44 seems to be the magic #, so let’s say I’m shooting for 44 songs on this one… My desire at this point would be to release one song at a time, over a period of 2-3 years, with it all adding up to a box set/album of sorts that would also include an art movie of the album.
On releasing old material:
I can say from my end right now the biggest hurdle is sorting out the business side with our former label EMI (once Virgin)… I do have all the Gish unreleased rights, but I don’t want to kick start that and by the time we get to Siamese have a whole legal mess on our hands and then have to stop our momentum.
And, in closing, on public life:
It means a lot to me that there are fans out there who see me as the humble human I truly am. Public life is a brutal, weird game that I have chosen to play for my own convoluted reasons my OWN way. I wish it was as simple as being about the trappings normally associated with fame! If only life were so simple. But it ain’t…but that too shall change. SP can and will represent a new kind of way of connecting my music with you in a way that leaves both parties feeling better for it. You have my personal promise on that.
We almost instantly should be able to put the “two other bands” thing on our list of things that will will never happen.
Is this also the longest post you’ve ever done mr.jjb?
Why is Corgan constantly starting over?
Machina was a do-over after the Adore debacle. Band explodes. Zwan: starting over. Ka-pow! Short lived solo career: Pumpkins reboot! Now he’s rebooting the reboot. The Pumpkins saga is taking on sisyphean proportions, I tells you.
@Rat: Ha. Considering how much of it is quoted material, it hardly should count.
rC: “and Bollwage.”?!
he should have addressed the jimmy situation but i can understand why he didn’t. everything that needs to be said was probably already said by jimmy. i’m glad billy took the time to address some of the issues regarding the difficulties of being an sp fan. however, i don’t like how he seems to try and excuse some of his behavior as part of his “public persona”. this has been mentioned by other people but, how can he be 100% committed to sp if he is planning on starting 2 new bands and solo material? billy’s made a lot of promises before so, while i appreciate his effort, i’m not going to hold my breath. but i am eager to see what happens.
Any thoughts on his proposed release method? Personally, I don’t like the idea of getting one song at a time. I don’t even own an iPod, and I hate iTunes.
And it seems like this method is a handy way of charging people twice for the same material. I am glad he’s not going with the subscription route, which is frankly ridiculous.
99 floors
And still nowhere to go
We’ll trampoline
Finally through the roof
I think he’s much better off by doing a full length album considering how good songs like “Owata” “As Rome Burns” “Song for a Son” ect. have been. Releasing one song at a time is going to create too much hype for that one particular song to be great and the experience might get ruined. I think its depressing that there will be no more albums in the traditional sense. Plus I cannot see him giving away the songs for free on SP.com for even for 99 cents on iTunes if he plans on going for 44 songs. There is going to have to be some corporate involvement if he is going to get the money to record the songs/tour/pay the other musicians.
He sounded quite positive to me! I just wish him well and I will look forward to whatever he does. Just stay true to himself and his art–that’s all I could want from him. And the fact that Jeff is still there makes me happy too!
Personally, I’m extremely excited. 44 songs over 2-3 years is 1-2 songs per month. I could definitely get used to having at least one new studio Pumpkins track to look forward to every month for a few years. There have been 6 in the last 15 months.
The alternative would be Billy goes into the studio over the summer, an album would be out Summer 2010 at the earliest. If he starts releasing a song a month in September (with maybe one or two months with 2 or more songs released) there could be 12-14 tracks out by June anyway. If you don’t like the idea of getting a song per month, just wait and download whatever is available come June or July.
I really like the idea of songs getting individual attention and not having to be wrapped prematurely in order to make it out for some antiquated concept of what an album has to be.
@Matt: “Releasing one song at a time is going to create too much hype for that one particular song to be great and the experience might get ruined.”
I think it would create less hype, because there will always be another song around the corner. Releasing one song at a time isn’t the same thing as releasing singles intended for mass consumption. 44 songs, most of them aren’t going to be “radio friendly”.
I agree that it has its downsides though and I can attest to that first hand. I’m a big fan of Kristin Hersh (of Throwing Muses), who released her most recent solo album (which she is currently re-recording for CD release) one track at a time over a year, as she recorded the songs. As a result, for me at least, the album doesn’t feel as cohesive as most of her past albums. I’m sure the final “retail” version will have a different running order and likely even significantly different arrangements of some songs making it more of a true album (and the original individual releases essentially nicely produced demos).
That probably wouldn’t be the case with SP though. After 40+ songs, Billy isn’t going to re-record everything to put into an album box set (although some changes will undoubtedly be made) and whatever is finally released is likely not going to ever be thought of as an “album’ by anyone who listened to the songs one by one over the course of a couple years. You’ll be way more familiar with songs that were released early on and decidedly less so with more recent tracks.
I don’t see this model endearing them to the number of people Billy sounds like he hopes to reach. People have short attention spans and I can’t see most following individual song releases over a multi-year period. And the 40+ song boxset at the end of the rainbow would just be way more material at once then a newly interested fan would likely want to absorb. That said, I don’t give a shit if it endears them to the masses or not, so long as great music comes out of it.
well said Skully.
I like the idea of a subscription service where he lets us hear the daily progress. i have always thought of that
@matt re: “There is going to have to be some corporate involvement if he is going to get the money to record the songs/tour/pay the other musicians.”
I think that’s what the Visa and Hyundai advertisements were all about.
@skullivan re: “I don’t see this model endearing them to the number of people Billy sounds like he hopes to reach. People have short attention spans and I can’t see most following individual song releases over a multi-year period.”
I strongly suspect that Billy will realize this over time and he will have to alter his strategy. I only hope that he actually follows through on the process of making more music, especially a concentrated effort at new songs recorded in the studio. I don’t know if he’ll get to 44 or 24 or 104. I just hope he keeps making great music in the years ahead.
thats what bothers me. I didn’t mind when “Today” was in a Visa ad because I’ve always identified that song with Siamese Dream and nothing else. But songs like “FOL” come straight from a commercial, they instantly make me think of that product rather than the song which is obviously what the company wants. Hopefully the new songs will be released on their own rather than through a commercial
I think the new way that Billy has proposed, with releasing individual songs, gives more attention to those really good songs that don’t get as much attention such as 7 Shades of Black, or Love, or Wound, or my personal favourite (Come On) Let’s Go!
well we shall see what will come of this … for now this is only a promise and a promise
is not good enough at this time. good luck billy
Heh, the Rolling Stone article about this is already garbling things:
“Those 44 songs will then be distributed over the course of two to three years, FIRST ON AN ALBUM, then a steady stream of individual songs, then capping off the whole thing with a complete box set.”
Billy said the box set would be the album, not that there would be an album and then a box set. They read the part that said “I still plan on making an album” and then their brain shut off, missing the entire point of what Billy was saying.
Ahh well, at least the tone was positive even if I don’t think it was fair to characterize the fans that Billy lashed out at during the last tour as fans who had stuck by him for the last 20 years. Those were fans who were there to hear the hits and got belligerent if they didn’t play 1979 the night they happened to be there. It was the media who was egging those fans on by setting them up for disappointment. People went into those shows with shitty attitudes.
I think the one-at-a-time release method is a fantastic idea, and it shows how well Billy knows himself as a musician. How many great studio recordings have never been finished, have been lost in the shuffle, because BC went into the studio with the hopes of recording XX number of songs, all together (Zwan-era, etc.)?
I also think it’s clear that BC is ok with listeners re-tracklisting his albums (hence, we have a huge MCIS era, a huge Adore era). Is it possible that this 44-song album won’t have an official tracklisting?
George:
Agreed. Billy knows that in this “singles age”, 90% of listeners won’t give a second listen to, say, “This Time” (not to mention the B-sides). Look at the charts on Last.fm to confirm this. Yet ALL of his songs are rather detailed compositions – by spoon-feeding us, each song will get the attention (in the blogosphere and in the minds of listeners) that it deserves.
I don’t know if its fair to say that “90% of listeners” won’t listen to the albums as a whole. I think its the causal listeners that won’t but a lot of people might. In 2007 when Tarantula came out and it was the only glimpse people had at Zeitgeist, I remember hearing a lot of positive things because that song was so good. Then the album came out and it didn’t live up to the hype that Tarantula had created. The fact is that after that single people weren’t talking too much about how fantastic those songs were as a opposed to when Mellon Collie came out or even Machina when the first single wasn’t necessarily the best song on the album. I think Billy is still a little bitter about the way things turned out with Zeitgeist since he has continually mentioned in concert that the album had poor sales. I think if there is a new full length album all that is needed is more than one great single to draw people in and from there they will be interested in what else he has to offer. People won’t turn away from great music just because they might not like the band that is making it. A hit is a hit and Billy is more than familiar with making hit singles. Its my opinion that Zeitgeist just didn’t have any after Tarantula as opposed to the other albums that had hit after hit after hit
I still stand by my 90% ballpark figure. The good news is, when you’re as massive an entity as the Smashing Pumpkins/BC, that 10% or so of “active listeners” should still be pretty validating and enough to preserve your legacy.
Is this what Billy meant when he said “singles”?
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