NPR’s Scott Simon has spoken with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan about the release of the band’s rock-opera final act. Atum.
Scott Simon, Host:
Few rock bands are as prolific, dynamic and ambitious as the Smashing Pumpkins. The group just released the final act of a 33-track rock opera called ‘ATUM’.
(Smashing Pumpkins “ATUM” soundbite)
Simon: Chicago bands have been making powerful and complex rock for decades. Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan joins from Los Angeles. Hey, hey, as they say at Wrigley Field.
Billy Corgan: Hello, sir. how are you today?
Simon: Okay. thank you. Opera begins with an instrumental piece that takes us into a vast universe.
(Smashing Pumpkins “ATUM” soundbite)
Simon: And here we meet the exiled rock star SHINee. What is SHINee doing here?
Corgan: Well, the gimmick of this story is that he’s an artist and perhaps his best days are gone. He doesn’t have much cultural or social significance, but for some reason he represents a threat to a world order that doesn’t necessarily want cacophony. He basically has a choice. That is, instead of putting you in jail and hanging out, we are more than happy to put you on a spaceship and send you into space, where you will spend the rest of your days. So he was exiled.
(Sound bite for the song “Butterfly Suite”)
Smashing Pumpkins: (singing) Who will sweep the dirty rain through the pinks and grays?
Simon: Tell me about his comrade June.
Kogan: So June is an obsessed SHINee fan or follower. He doesn’t know this person, but she comes from a wealthy family, so she’s going to be next to him, even if it’s at least the emotional feeling that someone is there for him. and sort of keep an eye on him. . Her second song in the musical, “Butterfly in Her Suite,” is an everyday love song she sang in the style of her old Hollywood musicals.
(Sound bite for the song “Butterfly Suite”)
Smashing Pumpkins: (singing) Good morning. Good morning, Mr. Sun. Our love began, so never hold on to our love. I am here to protect your dreams with you. believe.
Kogan: On this particular day, he typed in a code that said, “Hey, you can always choose this very noble deed – this deed has been touted as a sort of noble end.” That’s why it’s called the “March of Life”. When you hit the code, the ship loses its orbit and begins to rise toward the sun. Of course, she is heartbroken because this is the greatest love of her life floating in space.
(Sound bite for the song “Butterfly Suite”)
Smashing Pumpkins: (singing) …you and me.
Simon: Well, I think this is based on your 1995 double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. What did you feel from that album? What completed that arc?
Corgan: When we were doing what became our big style, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, we were at the height of a kind of rise to fame, the MTV era, and we were more I felt the need to do a big piece and it became a conceptual one. Backstage, I went to a record company and they said, “Please don’t do double albums.” Nobody cares about that anymore. And I think it’s one of the few albums that went on to make something that really touched a generation and it went to diamond. Enough of my bragging, all I want to say is that I took this intellectual and creative leap and in the end it worked out to some extent. In 2000, when the band was breaking up, we made a second conceptual record called Machina, which chronicled my descent into madness, and in a way a literal way. But the reality was that the band fell apart after that. So I never thought there would be a third chapter to this story, but at least three-quarters of the time the band would reunite.
Simon: I don’t want to let the phrase fall into madness slip by.
Kogan: Is that a question or…
Simon: Huh, is that true?
Kogan: Oh, yes. No, never. You know, there was a lot of power going on. One was dealing with loss. my mother passed away. Of course, it was very memorable for me that the band broke up long before the scheduled date. And, you know, as we all know by now, this is the coming technological revolution. It changed the dynamic model within the music business of how artists make money. Suddenly everyone started losing money. Nobody was selling records anymore. As you can imagine, the record industry’s reaction has become very conservative, which is not my usual attitude. Suddenly you felt a great fear. And when you combine horror and art, it tends not to be great work. It doesn’t hit people on a deeper level because it’s based on something that most people don’t think resonates: fear.
(sound bite for the song “Firefly”)
Smashing Pumpkins: (singing) We stand on a shield of clover – hunted but unloved, seasick as prey in the insipid fog. Waiting for fireflies
Simon: Mr. Cogan, may I ask about your father?
Kogan: Of course. whatever you want.
Simon: You’ve talked about him in the past, a three-time convicted criminal. I say you don’t have to because in your account they are often ruthless and cruel to you.
Corgan: Well, my dad used to say in an unkind way that it was good that you had a bad childhood because you grew up to be a better rock star. And my arguments were always, “Dad, you don’t know who I would have been without that?” Maybe I would have become a great classical composer, maybe not an artist struggling with dissociation in a music industry that doesn’t value people like me. And I am certainly recognized by my father, who was a musician and a very good musician. He had his chances in the music business, but he squandered every chance, largely due to his drug and addiction problems.
So after going through the disappointment and bitterness of his life experience, and then he was trying to figure out what to do with my experience, it was obvious in the sense that he understood music – he I understood what I was trying to do, but he often failed to understand the scale of the challenge. So if I call him and say yes, he’ll say, what are you doing? Well, I was just in the White House yesterday. It was hard for him to get over it.
Simon: But I was shocked by the fact that you were still calling him.
Kogan: Well, we’ve had our ups and downs. There were years when I didn’t say anything, and there were years when I did. For those listening, my father passed away about a year and a half ago. And although we have certainly made reconciliations, we have never felt that we have reached true understanding. After our second album came out and it was a huge success, he called me and said, And I thought, oh, the horrible criticism was coming, so I braced myself for the conversation. And he said, “I don’t know who made this record.” And I said, he was standing in front of you the whole time.
Simon: Wow. One of the final songs, I will call this project, is “Spellbinding”.
(sound bite for the song “Spellbinding”)
Smashing Pumpkins: (singing) This is Berlin, Baby, Luxor and Daisies, and I’m obsessed with your tomorrow. Weimar, Luxor, Daisies these days, and I’m obsessed with your tomorrow.
Simon: I’m looking forward to your tomorrow. There’s a lot of hope out there.
Kogan: It happens sometimes. I have moments of optimism.
Simon: So what do you do, take me. Are you going to look for me?
Kogan: If you don’t mind, I’ll tell you a story I’ve never shared before. The day we recorded the song you just played, the song was basically the part you just played. That was it. Well, that morning I had a dream. And, although it doesn’t happen to me often, it happened that I dreamed of a song I hadn’t written yet.
(sound bite for the song “Spellbinding”)
Smashing Pumpkins: (singing) Take me away. I will definitely find it.
Corgan: We came into the studio that morning and started recording, and we got to a point in the song where I thought it was kind of boring. And I said, hey, what do you know? I wonder if that dream I had is applicable to this song. It was just the right key change, literally just a dream down into the song. It happened like magic. I want all songs to be like that. But for that song, it was just like one in a billion.
Simon: Billy Corgan, frontman of the Smashing Pumpkins. And “ATUM,” the third and final act of their rock opera, is out now. Thank you very much, Kogan.
Kogan: Oh, thank you my friend. It was nice to talk to you.
(sound bite for the song “Spellbinding”)
Smashing Pumpkins: (singing) Take me away. I find you because no one else can care about you. take me away I will definitely find it. While I was correcting the faulty sun, as bright as your eyes, you were drawn to this rye.
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