Billy Corgan is obsessed with wrestling

If you'd like to join the obsessed community head over to join campsite.com We'll give you updates on episodes some behind-the-scenes access and a whole lot more That's join campsite.com. Hope to see you there You know one thing I love about our show is the totally weird places that our conversations go I mean, one of our guests was the celebrity chef, Michael Simon, and he and I ended up talking about our trip to the spa together to get a pedicure. Yesterday, I brought David in. He got his first pedicure of his life, and he enjoyed it very much. I will say that the paraffin, the hot wax, frightened him a little bit. It was hot. It was hot. I didn't know what it was. It's like purple in a bag, and they're wrapping your foot in a bag with purple goo, like hot purple goo. And of course, we also had on Tig Notaro, comedian, author, actor. She ended up giving my wife advice on how she can satisfy her obsession with half popped popcorn kernels. Has she tried sorghum? I have no idea. Okay. Should I tell her to try sorghum? Yes. Tell her to try sorghum. Tell me more about sorghum. Sorghum is like an even healthier grain than popcorn. All right, so that brings us to our guest today. It is Billy Corgan, who is the front man for the great band The Smashing Pumpkins. But the thing that I ended up talking to him about was this smoothie that they sell at a bougie grocery store in Los Angeles where I live. The grocery store is called Air One. They have these ridiculously expensive smoothies. They often name them after celebrities, and they named one after Billy Corgan. It is called the OG Goth. And wouldn't you know it, I got to ask the OG Goth himself about his smoothie. I don't like things that are too sweet. It's like almond butter? What's the... It's kind of got a kind of a almond buttery, peanut buttery kind of thing. It's tasty, mealish, proteinish, but very, very yummy. Because to me, sorry, we're talking smoothies now. you asked. So that is the conversation you are going to hear next with Billy Corgan. We're going to cover smoothie ingredients. We're going to cover his obsession with wrestling. We're also going to talk some music. Yeah, I promise. And just his general approach to life. So conversation with Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins coming up next. This is David Green is Obsessed. Billy, nice to meet you. Hey, how are you doing? I'm good. Thanks for doing this. So this show is about things that we obsess about. I don't know. I obsess about a lot of things. I don't know if you have enough time for me. I mean, I want to get to a bunch of them if we have time. But I guess the thing that interested me, like smashing pumpkins aside, it seems to be like wrestling is a thing that you have obsessed about a ton over your life. No, that's not true, actually. I loved it when I was a kid and then goth teen land. I was like not into it. I didn't really pick it back up again to my late 20s. I'd occasionally watch something, but I was like, that's not for me anymore. And I missed a lot of cool stuff. And then I caught the bug again in my late 20s. And then I've kind of never looked back. But working in the business was not something I expected on doing. And then secondarily, working in the business completely kills your fandom. Working in the business makes you less of a wrestling fan. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I love working in the wrestling business. It's an exciting thing and it's been certainly a Herculean challenge to try to bring back this great brand, but it'll kill your interest in it. I mean, you know, to be fair, I mean, the music business has killed a lot of my love for music. I've had to really fight to kind of stay connected to music. So I guess it's a similar dynamic. Why does getting deeper inside a thing kill your love of it? I think because I'm an obsessive compulsive person so you know once you lift every rock and turn over every stick I mean the mystery goes out of something you know yeah I mean when I listened to you know Led Zeppelin 4 I wasn't focused on the guitar sound and the out of tune vocal and it didn't stop anybody from listening including me it's later you start to break this stuff down And at first it becomes like a passion project. Like, oh, I wonder how they did that. And why did they do that? And at some point you start sort of almost being critical, not because you're trying to be negative. It's like in order to understand something, you almost have to see the good and the bad in something. And I started doing that with everything. And it's like I was talking to somebody recently, you know, who was very much in the Pro Tools perfect world. And they were like, I can't listen to the Bee Gees anymore. And I was like, what do you mean? And it's like, oh, the vocals are too out of tune. You know, it's like, what are you talking about? But that's the world we live in now where it's like things are so hyper examined. Things are so gamed that it's almost difficult at some point to stay in the fresh energy of discovery. Yeah. I guess I've gotten that way with audio. Like I listen to really great storytelling audio. And if there's some production like glitch, I just can't unhear it. Like I'm focusing on it. And it takes me out of actually experiencing the story. Yeah. I think there is another side that you can get to. I think if there's anything beautiful about it, if you can find your passion after you have too much knowledge on a subject or too much self-awareness, it does take out a different sweetness. Like when I think of how amazing the bands I grew up listening to are, given the technology, given the times, given the lack of information, they actually are even more amazing than I thought they were. So I think there's a sweetness there, but you almost got to go through the loss of innocence to get to the other side. I love that lesson. I'm going to think about that a lot and how I can apply it to my... Yeah, try that one. See if that works. Well, tell me about the National Wrestling Alliance. I mean, you bought the rights to it in 2017. You had to love wrestling enough to want to get on, get in the inside more. I'd worked in the independent circuit, which is kind of like the independent music circuit. You know, there's a lot of voices down there and a lot of them are smart and interesting, but they don't necessarily like independent music. They don't necessarily confront the essential existential problem, which is how does wrestling be successful at the highest levels? Then I have worked for the second biggest company in the world at the time, which was TNA. Now also surreptitiously, I think, owned by WWE. But back then they were completely wholly independent. And I learned how to produce television and write for television for the first time in my life. That all fell apart, lawsuits and stuff like that. So then the opportunity came up to own the NWA and it was like, okay, you can own a really cool historic brand and you can have total control. That was the attraction. It wasn't really the wrestling business itself. In fact, at that moment, I was never lower on the wrestling business than I was then. So you're talking about like television storytelling. I mean, that is something that we should all kind of pause and remind ourselves. Like this is not a sport in the traditional sense. wrestling pro wrestling it it is entertainment television yeah yeah i mean you know the common thing that you hear from the from the guy in the street is wrestling is fake and i guess if you said it in court it's true but it's not true in the literal sense of application meaning they are doing incredibly dangerous physical things in the ring and they train like crazy for it right i mean the physicality is totally real the physicality is real the the toll on their body to look the way that they do. The cosmetics are super important to the sport. And like all athletes, they have a shelf life. You know, if you're lucky, you can go into your 50s. But most people, you know, they might be in the business for 10 or 15 years. So they have a clock kind of running. There's different dynamics. And of course, there's different systems by which they can apply their trade, whether it's at the local VFW Hall or working for, you know, the biggest company in the world, which is WWE. And so getting into that ecosystem is very, very complicated understanding its arcane aspects, its roots into carny circus stuff going back to the late 1800s. It's a strange, complicated business. And so, yes, to the outside observer, it's like watching a Marvel movie and saying, oh, they're just, it's not real. That's the equivalent reaction that somebody in wrestling has to somebody saying that it's fake. It's like, yeah, so are movies, so are theatrical plays. It's sort of like what you're really asking of yourself. And the physical demand and the psychological demand of professional wrestling is very, very high. So I have great respect for what people do. Trying to innovate in the business, very, very difficult. Trying to be successful in the business, I would say is even more difficult. So you were drawn, though, when you got back into this, to the non-wrestling sides of wrestling, it sounds like. It was like the idea of controlling this sort of company that brings together entertainment, storytelling, wrestling, the idea of being able to control it wholly, you know, control the storytelling, the business side. I mean, that was more of the obsession, so to speak. Sort of. I mean, it is fun to make up a world. and wrestling is like creating a living movie that you're sort of making up as you go along. So that's attractive. And it pressed the same buttons for me as improvisational music or something. It's the idea of putting yourself into a very high intense pressure situation and seeing if you can pull off, let's call it the sketch that you have in your mind. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but the thrill is trying. And wrestling is one of the last bastions in American culture that still doesn't feel like it's been social media to death or perfected to death. Music certainly suffers from it, as do as almost everything else in American life. So it's got a kind of a rebellious streak. So that's also part of it too. I mean, I just, I think about maybe this is stereotyping too much, but if I had thought about there must be some rock musician out there who's big time into wrestling. This person must be bombastic, brash, just qualities that have never been in my mind when I think about you as a musician, as a personality. You're the opposite of what I would have imagined as a rocker getting into pro wrestling. Yeah. Well, my life is full of contradictions. I know to some people, they think there's a lot more thought behind it all, but there really isn't. I'm ultimately really impulsive. And my impulsivity has gotten me into a lot of trouble. So I think I've toned that part of my personality down. I'm just very much artistically a person who just jumps in with both feet. I mean, the greatest example is when I said to my record label after we made our successful second album that we were going to do a double album. We didn't have the songs for a double album. I didn't know what the double album was going to be about. I fought them tooth and nail to make a double album to then turn around and figure out, okay, now that I've just written this check with my mouth, how are we actually going to pull this off? And I spent the next eight months of my life like in sort of constant turgid turmoil trying to figure out like how to pull this craziness off. And, you know, obviously we did, but it wasn't easy. It wasn't even wise. It certainly wasn't career wise at the time. And in many ways, it was a form of kind of suicide. But that's just the way that I am. And I seem to operate best under those types of pressures. I don't know what about my makeup or my life brought me to that but that seems to be my most successful modality so wrestling I guess is an extension of that sort of that not thinking very clearly jumping in and This feels like I'm supposed to be here type of vibe What what gives you the feel of I supposed to be here say more about that for me It an intuitive faculty I think you just trust that you in the right place with the right group of people You know if you look at my band there were times where I was like okay, these are the right people in the right room. And there were other times there was like, these are the wrong people in the wrong room. Get me out of here. Sure. And I've been back in the same room with two of them for now seven years again. I don't think I could explain to them or you why one day it felt like they were the right people and one day it felt like they were the wrong people. they probably think I'm crazy. But that's to me, again, that's an intuitive thing. I think you just say, yeah, this feels right. Or no, this doesn't feel right. How did I end up on this island? And I suppose it feels from the outside a bit herky jerky and even publicly the way fans respond to different decisions. But I don't know. I just I'm an all in person. I don't know how else to describe it. No. And I think what you're saying is so important because I feel like and it's one of the risks of our show, we could kind of overanalyze why people love things. And a lot of it is just a gut feel. Like I like it here and I like the people around me and I like whatever's going on. It's okay to feel that. Yeah, there's no, I mean, start here and people get grumpy when I self-aggrandize, but I don't know how else to put it in any other context. I mean, at some point I was in a room somewhere in Illinois and I decided that my life was in, not only in rock and roll, but I was going to be successful at it. And everybody told me I was crazy. Everybody, including my own father was a musician. There was no empirical data to suggest that I was going to be successful. I had no trust fund. I had no connections to the music business, you know, at least the people in LA, you know, I mean, I, by all accounts, I shouldn't have succeeded, you know, but I did. Um, and it was just a felt sense that I needed to keep going and pursuing it. And not only just pursue it, I pursued it in a very unique, specific only to me way in terms of the type of music I pursued, the lyrical themes, everything, including even the way I sang and I produced my records. And I had a therapist once who told me, you know, once you pull that off, no one's ever going to tell you that you're crazy again, because he said, I sit here every day and I try to manage people's delusions. That's literally what a psychologist does, is to manage someone's delusions, not to dissuade them of their delusions, but to say, hey, by the way, this is probably borderline delusional. What's the productive version? What's the non-productive version? Like, if you want to take a painting class, yes, but don't expect to end up in the Louvre. Well, that's very Chicago, right? I heard the same thing. Hey, you want to play gigs, go to college, play gigs on the weekend, but don't expect to end up on the cover of Rolling Stone. Well, once you end up on the cover of Rolling Stone with that same delusion, no one can tell you. No one can tell you otherwise. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So, but it's not a perfect intuitive faculty. It's not like every time I felt that little ping of that's where I need to be. In fact, a lot of things were mistakes at the time that ended being course corrections that ended up being very profitable. I don't mean financially profitable, emotionally profitable down the road because I was willing to do the thing I shouldn't have done. I ended up doing the thing I was ultimately wanting to do. Supposed to do, I guess, is kind of the thing I'm trying to point to. It's like there's a lot of things we're supposed to do, but I don't think for most people, they ultimately, when it's all said and done, they do have regrets because they didn't sort of at some point sort of bet against the house. Can I go back to childhood though since you brought it up? You got into wrestling. This is the pre-losing innocence time because you were watching it with some of your family, right? When you were a kid in Chicago? Yeah. My great-grandmother was in her 80s, barely spoke English, Belgian national. And my grandfather was probably in his 60s at that point, definitely had his issues with life very tacit turn withdrawn so there I am on a Saturday morning watching wrestling you know 1971 in Chicago I mean God knows what I was watching I mean I I remember what it felt like and and certainly the modern NWA in many ways is a reflection of that impression what did it feel like it's like somebody turned on the channel to the Mars channel. You know, like suddenly we're watching a program from Mars. Like who, who are these people and what are they doing and why are they screaming? And what is all this strum and drang about? It was sort of interesting to me. And I didn't know what I was watching. I mean, I, you know, obviously it's simple. They yell and they get mad and they get in the ring, but I didn't, I had no understanding of the Greek kind of tragedy subtext of the whole thing. It was just like interesting to me that there were these incredibly outsized characters that seemed to be from another planet. I think wrestling appeals to like the basest part of my nature it's like if i have a base level creativity that's where wrestling lives and music i guess would live on the higher level of creativity that might sound weird to people but i think it's fun to like do dumb stuff yeah and wrestling when it's great is dumb and fun at the same time it's not supposed to be you know greek it's not supposed to be shakespeare let's put it that way so it's it's the opposite end of a spectrum on creativity compared to your music. I mean, say more about that. What is the high level that you put into your songwriting and kind of your music career that is the opposite of the kind of level stuff that wrestling gives you? Yeah, I think music for me in its highest achievement is finding your highest voice, your highest level of melodic and technical capability, and exhausting it completely and seeing if somehow that translates. Wrestling is really more like a communal vibe. It's community theater. It's like, can you appeal to everybody in the room? When I do music, I'm not worried about appealing to everybody in the room. And in fact, I assume most people won't like what I do. And that's been historically and traditionally correct. Speaking of more of the base level creativity, tell me about NWA power. Is it power with all the R's? How do I say it? Just power. Just power. Okay. You can say it. It's just a little fun. Extra Rs are not necessary. It's a little, it's just having fun with the thing. Yeah. So it's on Roku now, right? Yeah. Roku, most people know as a portal to other things. So Roku eventually figured out that they could create their own channel. So you go into the Roku portal, but you want to go to the Roku channel. And we're actually on Roku Sports Channel. They're building it up. It's a recent thing. So it's cool on there. They've been great. It's definitely our biggest look so far since I've owned the company. And for the uninitiated, what are people going to experience if they jump on Roku and they're watching NWA Power? It's an hour-long program, usually about four matches a show. And it has all the traditional things, people getting mad at each other and talking junk about each other. And just really, really high-quality professional wrestling. I think that's what we do really, really well at this point. What we lack in, let's call it, production, blow the rest of my fortune on wrestling, we make up for and really, really high quality efficiency in the ring. It's hard to explain. It's like having a very, very high level of in-ring product and emphasizing that as a sort of qualitative statement. It would be similar to an indie band saying, look, we can't afford a million dollar record, but we can afford million dollar songs. And so that's kind of our, that's what we get by on and that's how we've rebuilt the brand. Have you wrestled yourself a lot? No, no, I have no interest. You've never done it. You've been a fan, but have never done it yourself? No, I've been in the ring a few times and I've done a couple of physical things, but now I have no interest. I'm really honestly more interested in the creativity of it all and the, and the art of it all. You have just been honored by the International Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame for your contribution to the sport. Yeah. What, what is, what did that mean to you? Well, you know, wrestling is a very much a closed society and most of the people who gain traction in it either come from known families or have put 20 years in the ring in themselves and then they make a name for themselves coming in as an interloper i.e a allegedly famous person really didn't buy me much it bought people trying to use me and my money to get for their own gain but that's that's probably pretty obvious right building a reputation on my own name in wrestling that's totally distinct from the music thing has been a has been a 10-12 year journey and it's not over. I'm still here. So it feels good because I have probably over the last seven years, eight years, probably hired 500, 600 different wrestlers to perform in an NWA ring. So there's pride in, I've brought the business back. I create employment opportunities. Some people that have worked for me have gone on to bigger and better things. And I don't throw shade on that. I mean, that's my facility in the business at this point. If I can continue to grow, well, that at some point we would be competitive at the top level. But at this point, we make our name on rep. And so it's part of building that rep. And so that's honorable to me. In the Albany Times Union, they did a story recently. And this made me curious the way they started it. Billy Corgan has his feet firmly planted in two worlds. In one, he's an alt-rock icon as lead singer and primary songwriter of Smashing Pumpkins. In the other, he's the owner and promoter of the professional wrestling organization National Wrestling Alliance. Despite his efforts and high-profile status as an artist and personality, however, he's found that the two worlds rarely intersect. What efforts are you making for them to intersect and where is that not happening? Good question. I mean, this is where you can misread, let's call it, fans that you have. I'm the type of fan that I'm interested in whatever the people I'm a fan of are doing. I'll at least give it like a poke around. A lot of my fans, when I announced my entree into professional wrestling, not only weren't interested, they were against it. They were like, don't do this, Billy. Oh, yeah. You know, why don't you spend more time writing a good song? That was one of my favorite comments. I saw that pretty routinely. Huh. When I got into professional wrestling, I guess it would have been about 12, 13 years ago, it was kind of not the best period for my life publicly, musically. I was kind of on the rebound but maybe they wouldn't have seen that so it seemed like if he could just get his act together musically and oh wait now he's going to do wrestling like what the hell you know it's kind of that was the vibe I think the most fair comment I've seen from fans through the years is it's not for me but I hope you have success in it and I think I've kind of rounded around to okay that's nice at least if people kind of think good thoughts I'll take that it does strike me as odd that if you're a fan of somebody's musical life and there are people who have been with me for 30 years um it strikes me as odd that not once could they sit down and watch a one-hour program and decide whether or not it's kind of like they owe it to you it's like they've loved your music for three decades like why not they definitely don't know it to me no they definitely don't but i'm saying i think that's kind of odd i'm the type of person who at this point would have been like okay i gotta check what uh what what is he doing you know what i mean just the curiosity of it all. I think the most, I've seen this through the years. I finally checked it out. It's really, really good. I can see why you're in it. It's not for me, but I wish you well in it. That's like- Oh, that's perfect. That's what you're going for. I think that's like, wow, thank you. That feels right to me. I know it's important to you. I gave it a chance. Not for me, but I think it's cool what you're doing. That's the right vibe. And so over the time that vibe has taken over the other vibe and that's the general vibe in the fan community but but i've given up on thinking that because i have i don't know how many people listen to us on spotify last year but if like 0.001 would give a fuck about the nwa i'd been at much different point in my life but it just doesn't work that way well people definitely still care about smashing pumpkins do they do they i mean well let's see you're reissuing melancholy and the infinite sadness right a reissue of that album has it been it's been 30 years yeah shot original yeah does it feel like 30 to you no no it feels more like 20 i know that may not be a big distinction but 10 years is a lot of time and yeah decades of difference why does it feel like 20 and not 30 i think it's because it's been busy i mean that album obviously blew the doors open to a musical life and i've never looked back i mean i've worked consistently since then and you know a lot of the music that I worked on hasn come out yet from different periods And then there were aborted things and cluster messy things that happened But I worked continuously and then I taken on other things starting a family Now I have three kids, have a tea house. My wife has a fashion brand. I'm now doing podcasting. And then, of course, the NWA. So I'm just as busy as I've always been musically, but I've tacked all this other stuff on. aren't you supposed to be like toning things down as you get later in life and not ramping up like what no i'm not there yet i'm not there yet i mean i don't don't don't be but it's amazing you're just trying to add all this stuff yeah i mean uh if you don't mind the the slight diversion uh not at all maybe it's easiest to put in the wrestling context but i found that i had to do other things non-music to balance out my love hate thing with music and by getting some more life balance, I found my love of music came back like full force. And that's been about now 10 years of like, okay, I'm in it to win it again. And I can look back now with some empathy that there were hard years in there, you know, somewhere in the 2000s where I was like, it was hard for me to put 100% of myself into music because I was just going to die. I couldn't survive it emotionally and I couldn't survive the kickback. knowing I was making music at the time that not only was not working whatever that means but also was going to be wholly rejected not by the outside world which doesn't surprise me but like by people who were telling me that they didn't jump off a roof because of one of my albums but they couldn't be bothered to listen to whatever I was doing or everything I put out was the worst thing ever and even the other day I was looking for something because uh we're putting together a Zwan reissue which was the band Jimmy and I had from 2001 to 2003. Yeah. And I was clicking around the internet looking for a song that I didn't recognize, but a fan said we had played it. And somebody came across a Reddit post. I didn't read the postings, but I just saw the headline and it said, this is the last great song you wrote. And it was a song from like 2004. You know what I mean? I'm just like, oh my God, this is so crazy. Like I haven't written one good song. And it's just that world, that swirling world of negativity, trying to navigate that and stay focused. So if music comes from within, if the passion comes from within, that's easy. And so I've been lucky that I've been able to find it again with music. What is the love-hate when you use that phrase to describe your relationship with music? Well, I think I should be clear. It's the music business. And as a big executive once told me, with an English accent, by the way, it's called the music business for a reason, Billy. That was the quote. It's called the music business for a reason, Billy. Yeah. What do you take from that? Well, I mean, I'm in business now myself. I mean, I run a label and, you know, I do deal with outside personalities. And at some point, you know, it's about economics. It's about other things and whether or not your artistic boxes get checked or the artist feels that you're doing everything you can do when you probably have about 40 concerns that you're trying to balance. when you're an artist in the throes of your 20 something passion you can't understand why the record label which by the way you're making millions and millions of dollars for is not doing everything in their power to to make it work so you have the beginning story which is no one cares about me which every artist goes through then you have the wow they care about me but wait they're they're taking advantage of me most artists that are successful go through that then you have the hey i'm actually getting this done can we all work on the same team and then you then you realize the frailty of the human ego including your own and then of course there's the inevitable point where it all just sort of slows down or stops and then you find out who your friends are and then you know i mean i had my band turn against me i mean i had managers turn against me i've been in massive lawsuits i mean you you go through all those behind the music things uh that can break your heart i mean as i've said many times james eha the pumpkins and i didn't talk i think for about 17 years and we were really really close in the early days of the bands so to go from you're really really close you start a successful band you're in a successful band the band breaks up after a great run of success and then you don't talk for 17 years i mean that's that's pretty intense you know that's a lot of who am i who are you who are we who were we and now being back in the band together for the last seven years you get back into like well what was that what was the other thing now we're you know it's like are we on chapter three or book three or star wars three or where are we at i i talked to somebody recently and they were like how many people have floated in and out of your life in the last 30 years so that's a tough question to answer i would say and i'm i'm i didn't sit down with a piece of paper but i would say if you took people that were let's call it in a form of intimate circle like they had your telephone number and you were in business with them are you in some form of friendship or personal relationship with them. I'm like counting in my head what's in my own. Not the closest circle like your mom and your dad, but like let's call it the outer circle and maybe even one more circle outside of that. I would say in those 30 years there's probably even 400 people that have come and gone. And if you want to blame me for it all, that's totally cool. Maybe it was all my fault. But that's a lot of people to come in and in and out. Yeah, and be gone. That you had dinners with and birthdays with and were there when their mom died or they were there for you when your mom died or and then you wake up one day and go like wow what happened to bob like bob's long gone how do you reflect on that number and that that reality that you're well there's there's two different ways i think that the kindest way is that it's a cruel business and it's a law of attraction thing and when you're hot and you're and you're making a lot of money and you're getting a lot of energy around you and again remember we were pre-internet mostly so when you generated that kind of energy i mean it felt pretty organic because it was i mean when you walk through the mall you felt it it wasn't like somebody looked at their now when i'm in the mall i see people look at their phone and then look at me like you know what i mean like is that you either you know the point is you were either recognized in the mall or you weren't right there was no research to be done in the moment there's no like is that him and then double check google we can google that yeah yeah so that's the kindest version i think that the negative version is just it's impossible to form and sustain real relationships when the center of the relationship is something that neither the artist can define or the people around he or she can define. Why can't that be defined? I don't think it's any different than why can Shohei Otani, you know, hit three home runs in one game and strike out four times in the next. Touche. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Even if somebody gave me a magic formula and said, look, you can recreate your 1993 or 1995 success by doing X, Y, and Z, I would do it. But somehow it doesn't work. It's like there's no magic formula. And when you do it, no one tells you how to do it. And when you do do it, you think you know what it is. And then one day it stops. And I don't know. I mean, at one point, I think we had 11 charting singles in a row. and the songs were very different. It wasn't like one formula. There was electronic music, there was acoustic music. Yeah, you guys varied a lot. It was amazing. Yeah, we were just on an unholy roll and then one day it just stopped. You know, it just stopped. I don't know. I mean, so I can appreciate that from a business perspective. Like, hey, you got the thing they want. We're more than happy to whore you out. And if you're willing to whore yourself out with us, great, even better. And then one day it stops and you look around and go well i need another chance and at some point they just go you're out of chances i mean where are you now you guys just did a big asia tour like do you do you what's your mindset right now at this moment in kind of the smashing pumpkins journey well um there's no plans for the band to record so that's where i'm focused um you know we've we've come off every long run with it with it with a plan to go into some other recording cycle so this is the first time i think in seven eight years where there's no plan so that feels a bit strange to me are you at peace with that or do you want to come up with a plan and start recording again well you're not going to stop me you know what i mean so let's put it that way i'm i'm going to work with or without anybody so that's that's the given but if you look at the band from an outside perspective the bands as hot or popular or whatever kind of catchy term you want to use as it's been since like late 90s 2000 i mean and the thing i would point to and this is a obviously anecdotal because i'm using my eyes but i would say every show that we played over the last year and you could go back even further but certainly the last year and we played we did a full europe run um and i also did a i did my own run solo in america i did about 13 shows 16 shows and then um we did asia seven shows in japan singapore and then we went did two shows in the middle east every show was at least i would say 60 25 and under hmm that's amazing amazing let's feel good it's amazing it's like who are you and where'd you come from but welcome this is awesome so whatever's going on with young people and what we represent or a generation represents is very very interesting because i can't point to like one thing. It wasn't like there was a movie or a commercial or, you know, I don't know. There's there wasn't the one thing, but there they are. Suddenly there's a really young audience standing in front of us and we're sort of like, okay, this is great. Do you have any cultural observation about that age group that might explain it at all? Or are you just sort of like, I'm going to, I'm just going to enjoy this, whatever. I have, I have, I have my guess if you want to hear it. Yeah, I do. My guess is that that generation in particular has only known the plasticine world of pop. Auto-tuned vocals, gridded drums, and the only time they can get anything else is from before. Yeah. So if they're attracted to The Cure or Led Zeppelin or Nirvana or Pearl Jam or like at least they're listening to some point where high achievement met organic heartfelt representation. That's my best guess. And we're still young enough and playing at a high level enough and viscerally enough that it's sort of like, well, there it is. They don't even have to do the math like, oh, I can imagine what it used to be like. It's like, there it is. It's still present. And I think you see Deftones, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Nine Inch Nails. There's a lot of artists of the Gen X times that are out there playing very youthful rock infused shows with no compromise. production musically aesthetically vibe attitudinally that's even a word and so if you're 20 years old it's like there it is yeah it's you don't have to it's not on youtube like there it is it's right in front of you and i think there's something really holographically compelling about that now that's my guess i think you nailed it to me i guess i wonder that there's something full circle about what going back to what you started describing we're talking about wrestling actually, that you go through this love of something and then a loss of innocence and then reclaim the love in some pure way. Am I wrong in thinking that your musical journey kind of has followed that course too? I don't know if this is an answer, but I mean, I've always tried to document wherever I am. So if I'm up, I document up. And if I'm bummed, I document bummed. I don't try to performatively be something I'm not. Now I've used artifice to create the contrivance by which I can present myself as honestly as possible if I don't feel me as I am. Because a lot of people still to this day have issues with the way that I just naturally am. But the earnest messaging has always been to try to most closely represent what I feel. So if I'm losing, I'm losing musically too. I'm not trying to create bummy music. I'm just being honest, I guess Where are you now in your life that being reflected in kind of the music that you creating Don honestly don know That kind of where I at right now I trying to figure that out Figure that out going forward Yeah I mean I have three kids under 10 right So nine seven and a baby. So that's part of it. You like being a dad? Oh, it's amazing. It's the best. It's the best thing. I don't, I don't know if I'm really good at it, but I'm trying. You know, I told my kids the other day, yesterday they were driving me batty. And I just said, you know, I'm a human being. Like, I, I'm not super dad here. I'm just a guy, you know, I'm just trying my best, you know? And were they patient then? No, no, they don't, they don't care. And that's fine. They, they shouldn't, they, I I'm okay with them expecting the best for me. I don't, I don't have any issues with that, but I'm also okay with being honest with them. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm definitely, sorry, philosophical, but I'm, I'm a firm believer in this idea that you don't want to be your kid's friend. You want to be their parent. But I think there are times where you could raise your hand and say, look, I'm just one dude here. You know what I mean? I don't have all the answers. And they're too young enough to understand that I certainly, I didn't see good parenting modeled. I didn't, I mean, it was all from television. I mean, I had three parents, you know, one beat the fuck out of me. Another ended up in a mental institution. The other one ended up in jail. And that's just giving you the cliff note version of the story. So I don't have good like you know sally was a great parent and i'm gonna follow what sally did i don't have any of that you're kind of charting the course on on your own and figuring it out well i try to remember what i liked about what my parents did like i loved that my father uh in his wisdom he was big on you decide he wasn't do this it was like okay here's door number one door number two you pick and here's the consequences for both. He always put it back on me, behavior. So I think I learned at a young age that if I was willing to think it through, I had more freedom and latitude in how things rolled. But I do think there's something about that and I try to do that with my kids. It's like, look, you want freedom. You gotta earn freedom with trust. I'm not just gonna hand it to you. But we're talking about kids under 10, you know? Yeah. Wait till they turn 14 and we'll see how good I am at this game. I'll call you back. Exactly. Well, our show is called David Green is Obsessed, and I always wrap up by turning and saying Billy Corgan is obsessed and explore just a couple of other obsessions like in a lightning round. I do want to start with smoothies, though, because you have a new smoothie line named after you at Erewhon. which is for the uninitiated. And you should all consider yourself lucky because I am obsessed with Erewhon. And I'm embarrassed to say that. I live in Los Angeles and I go there way too often. And my wife tries to get me to stay away from there because you can very quickly get sucked into these wonderful new products, including the OG goth smoothie from Billy Corgan. Were you involved in the development of said smoothie? eat? My wife is the foodie of the family. Okay. And she does have a relationship with the Air One ownership. Got it. So she had reached out to them and said, I would love that Billy do one of these. And they were amenable to that. So I let her develop the recipe knowing what I would like. Okay. So until I actually did the commercial for them, I had never tried the smoothie, but it was exactly what I would have done. So I was- Your wife was right. She nailed it. she's really that person. What do you like about the smoothie? What are the ingredients? I don't like things that are too sweet. It's like almond butter? It's kind of got a almond buttery, peanut buttery kind of thing. It's tasty, mealish, proteinish, but very, very yummy. Because to me, sorry, we're talking smoothies now. It's a very important chapter in your journey. I did. You know, I think when you take a sip of a really sweet drink, it might be attractive, like the first five sips, but then it starts to wear on me personally. So I like something that's like, it doesn't overdo it. You know what I mean? It's a little understated, so it sort of works for the whole drink. And they did an awesome job of like creating the colors too. I saw a lot of people commenting on the color, which for foodies, I'm not a foodie, but like color is a big deal for foodies too. Do you feel like the OG goth? well you know um i was a goth starting in 85 when i was 18 and goth in terms of popular culture i know it went back further in in uk culture but as far as american culture i think it had only been around for a few years so i was pretty early on the train you were before it was cool i'm gonna say that was i was a long long before it was cool i mean nothing makes me laugh now to see all these kids being goth, you know? Um, and, uh, yeah, so I guess you call me OG. I mean, I'm not pure OG, but I'm in the, I'm in the early classes. And I love the price. The OG goth Billy Corgan smoothie costs $19 and 79 cents, which obviously I see what you did there with the song. I had nothing to do with that, but I did think it was funny. Yeah, it's pretty good. Um, all right. What's one more non-music obsession that uh you've not told many people in your in your network about but you're going to share with us um right here right now well let's see i can do a quick poke around um i collect records i'm sure that's not a big surprise i collect books that's probably not a big surprise uh i collect wrestling memorabilia going back to the 1920s that's not a big surprise um i did have a period where i was collecting salt shakers that's probably salt shakers yeah what got you just like the design of salt shakers seemed i like um i'm i'm not trying to make anyone mad at me so i'm going to start by saying that's just my disqualifier i grew up with i didn't grow up with a lot of money so when i when i made money i kind of didn't know how to spend it so i fell in the obvious trap which is like oh if i spend a lot of money i will get x whatever i thought I was going to get. Eventually, I figured out that buying something for 20 bucks that I was really interested in was just as good as buying a Ferrari. I know that sounds strange, but I literally got the same dopamine hit. So what I started doing is I allowed myself to buy lots of cool little things. So my house is full of lots of cool little things. And I found salt shakers, historic salt shakers, going back to the early 1900s. There's lots of cool. I think it's not as big a thing as it used to be, but there was times in American culture where you could almost tell the way the world was rolling by the salt shakers that were being sold at the time. So I probably have like, you know, 300 salt shakers, you know, and we're talking like ornate salt shakers, not like, you know, Mickey Mouse salt. No, no, we're talking about really cool art deco ones from the 1920s down to, you know, the tourist tchotchke one of a girl riding on an alligator and the girl is the salt and the alligator is the pepper. So, um, and then ancillary related to that and for the uninitiated there was a period after the war world war ii um where in order to get the japanese economy back up and running america started importing a lot of porcelain from japan and they were marked occupied japan which told the american public it's okay to buy yes it's from japan but it's occupied japan meaning u.s forces right and this was one of the things that they propped up the Japanese economy with was all these cool kind of tchotchkes from Japan. So Occupy Japan figurines are kind of cool. So imagine a kind of anime version of a baseball player in the 1950s. That's kind of gives you the visual. So I kind of collected that stuff for a while too. I love these obsessions. My wife is against it. I will tell you honestly, she's like, can we get rid of all this stuff? No, I mean, go in storage somewhere safely, but yeah yeah but in storage just not the same i mean maybe it's a guy thing but i just want to show off my stuff i don't know what that is i'm it's whatever it is i like it and i'm with you my recent my recent thing is i've been collecting um vintage movie posters oh nice is there one that you you love that you found recently i recently bought um they did a an estate sale of the cecil b de mill estate i guess it must have still been in the family all these years because he He's been passed away for many years. And I bought from his private collection a silent film that he had done that starred an opera star. And he had the vision, as crazy as it sounds, to cast an opera star who was super popular. Opera stars, of course, at the time were like the rock stars of today. He cast, I think her name was Miss Farrar. Geraldine Farrar seems to be the name that strikes my mind. Anyway, he cast her in a silent movie. And people were like, are you kidding? Why would you cast an opera star in a silent movie? But it was very successful. That's amazing. So it's an interesting piece of movie history, this kind of chance that he took. So it's a beautiful, big, large scale, litho printed poster of her for whatever the movie was. It might have been Salome or Camille or one of those famous opera. He basically cast her in the dramatic opera that you can't hear her singing, that she sings in. I don't know. It's only it can be in movies. It makes no sense, but it was successful. That's amazing. I love everything that you collect seems to have some sort of interesting cultural detail from a certain moment, a time and place. See, that's one of those things. In the 90s, I almost bought the Cowardly Lion costume that was available for sale. From Wizard of Oz? Yeah. At the time, it went for $250,000. And I think now it's probably worth between $2 and $4 million. Jesus. The shoes just went for $33 million. Wow. And the witch hat just went for, I think, $2.5 to $3 million. But at the time in the 90s, the Cowardly Lion costume went, I think, for $250. But I almost bought it. But like it would be the same question. Like people would ask me, why would you want the Cowardly Lion costume? One might ask. Okay, right. And my answer is always the same. It's like you come over to my house and somebody goes, what the hell is that? Well, that's the Cowardly Lion costume. The thought of just standing there and being that guy always makes me laugh in my mind. Yeah. Like what's that? Oh, you ever see that movie? you know so um so yeah but but now you can see the prices on these things have really gone crazy so well if i ever come to your house i know how to to endear myself to you look for something and be like what the hell is that billy well okay why do you have it i'll leave you on this i actually have the oldest um recognized women's wrestling belt in the world oldest recognized women's wrestling belt in the world okay there were a few um ones that went before but the first world title recognized and there was just a movie about mildred burke that came out recently she was the original women's champion and when she became the women's champion in 1937 somewhere around there women could not wrestle in most states in america it was illegal huh she was the one who broke that barrier down and opened it up where women could go earn a living on the road in all 50 states so i have that belt and i bought it from the family and there's so much more meaning even beyond wrestling in terms of the statement. So if you come to my house, you could say, what's that? And I can tell you the story. Well, now I know, but I'm ready to come to your house and take a look at that wrestling belt. That sounds very cool. Billy, this has been a real pleasure. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Dave. It's great to meet you. And yeah, can't wait to keep following where your journey goes. Okay, awesome. Thank you. David Green is Obsessed is a production of Campside Media. It is hosted by me, David Green. Our senior producer is Lane Rose. We are mixed by Ewan Leitramuwen. The executive producers of Campside Media are Vanessa Gregoriadis, Matt Scherr, and Josh Dean. Special thanks to our operations team, Ashley Warren and Sabina Mara. If you have an obsession you would like to share, hope you do, you can send us an email. The address is obsessed at campsidemedia.com. That's obsessed at campsidemedia.com. And hey, if you enjoyed the show, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts. Really appreciate you listening.