Ep. 247: Billy Corgan | How He Built Smashing Pumpkins Into a 30-Million Album Empire

Everything you write has value. Don't let them tell you that it doesn't. You know, this is a bit of a hero's journey. We have no money. We're playing a style of music people don't even like. And I'm sitting somewhere trying to convince a band we will one day be one of the biggest bands in the world, okay? This is like a game, do you understand? There's only so much time. Somebody's gonna win and somebody's gonna lose. So you need to have real chops as a writer and you need to write in a way that cannot be imitated. Otherwise, you will die. You're writing 100% songs and producing them. There were times where people didn't like the way it was going down, which is that I was 100% writer. Was it hard for them to see the windfall of publishing? Yes. How did you deal with that? Poorly. We don't actually know what our value is going to be posthumously. She's like, you think everything you touch is important? And I was like, yeah, because everything I touch has value. I just don't know how much value. I refuse, patently refuse to use it. I refuse to use AI in my music creation. You're literally leaning into the thing that will destroy you. How do you explain a path where you can make a living doing music? Number one, I would say. This season is presented by NMPA, the National Music Publishers Association. Champions of songwriters and publishers everywhere. Welcome to And The Writer Is, I am your host, Ross Golan. Today's legend. Is to alternative and rock music what Chicago architects are to skylines. And this frontman slash producer's unique tone and hauntingly rich compositions would be hung up in the Chicago Art Institute if they were hangable. I mean, maybe it's because I grew up playing in bands in the suburbs of Chicago, or maybe it's because Smashing Pumpkins riffs are how all of us in my generation learned to play guitar. Or maybe it's because I'm a Cubs fan. But, you know. You could talk about the greatest bands of the last four decades, but you better be discussing the artistic influence and commercial impact his band has had, not just to me, but on the pantheon of recorded music. All the way from Highland Park, this artistic savant is still savanting. And the writer is Billy Corgan. Wow, that's quite an introduction. You don't introduce people like that on your podcast? No. I literally just say, welcome, and we jump right in. For people who don't know you, what are songs that you think people should recognize that you've released? Honestly, it's not really been my. I mean, I'll answer your question if you like, but it's not really how my life has gone. You know what I mean? Because we had big hits in a certain period in the 90s, but more of my life has been around those things. So, yeah. I don't want to say who, but I was once asked to be on the podcast, and I went and listened to an interview that they had done with another, you know, sort of legendary musician. And the entire focus of the interview was about those kind of seven, eight years. And I thought, I just don't find this interesting, because then the artist just kind of fell into the same trope stories that they've told a thousand times. So, yeah. I mean, I consider and say, I'm the guy who wrote 1979 or, you know, Bullet With Butterfly Wings. But when I walk through airports. For many years, when I would be stopped, that's what people would want to talk about. You know, like the joke is, you're the rat in the cage guy. But over the last 10 years, because I had to sort of figure out a different way to be an artist in this new digital and social economy, it's less about that now, and it's more about something else. Like, the band has become more institutional. My place in media has become sort of something that nobody expected, including me. So, yeah. I mean, I'm the guy. I wrote those songs, but it feels like somehow reductive. And I don't mean to say I don't love my songs. It's just, I lived with that for so long that I detached from the concept, because that was the only way to move forward. Otherwise, you're one of those artists out here who's wearing spangled jeans, and you're walking around telling people about 92 or something for the rest of your life. And I just, like, I can't be that guy. The late Allie Willis, you know Allie? Mm-mm. She wrote, like, September for Earth, Wind, and Fire, and the Friends theme. Oh. I would literally just play that. I played that song for my kids, like, two days ago. I mean, just legend, right? What a song. And she's such a wonderful person. But she was like, don't ever ask about the hits. You know, you want to ask about, like, it's the four years that no one was looking when you wrote those hits. Well, in my case, I mean, it was the, you know, it was the 10 years before, and it's been the 20 years, 20 to 25 years after. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really defined my life. You know, my father was a musician. And he, for a while, he kind of had this vibe, like, oh, you got lucky. He was more so born of bitterness, because he hadn't sort of gotten out of music what he would have wanted. So he treated my success as like, oh, you know, you know, it's like a comet. You're going to go up, and you're going to come back down kind of thing. Rocket, that'd be a better analogy. And then when he saw what I was doing, and he saw the multi-generations kind of coming to see me play, and the influence of the band, and sort of even the videos, whatever you want to sort of. And I was like, oh, I'm going to go back and check on that. Then he started to say, okay, now I understand. Like, it's a much bigger thing than whether or not you had a moment. Because my dad was the guy who was telling me stories about jamming with, you know, Rufus and Chaka Khan in '74, 20 years later, as a sort of, you know, I was close to the flame type of thing, you know? Was he a studio musician? No, no. My dad was a sort of a rock blues-ish guitar player, kind of a more bluesy Carlos Santana. Could sing, very good looking. Wasn't a rock musician. Wasn't a writer, per se. And it just never clicked, you know? And then drugs, and women, and jail, and you know, he went, just derailed his life at sort of 30-something. When did you have that conversation when he said, I get it now? We had about 20 of those after a certain point. It's hard to explain, because we had such a fractured relationship in my youth that we sort of, over time, put the pieces back together, and then they'd fall back apart. So there's not one conversation. Yeah. But the one I would point to, he one time called me and said, I want you to know something. And I said, okay. And he said, I know I haven't always supported you the way you would have liked me to support you. And I'm like, yeah, that's definitely true. And he said, but now I realize you're one of the best songwriters in the world. Wow. And he said, particularly your lyrics. The lyrics got to him. Yeah. And they were really related to them, because he was around for those times that I was talking about. So that was like, wow. That was shocking to me, because he dismissed my musical pursuits. He wasn't supportive. He used to charge the band 10 bucks to rehearse in his living rooms for electricity, and it was a lot of dumb shit that went on. So for him to come full circle around the other side and be like, no, I totally get it. It was heavy for me, yeah. That's an intense conversation. It was a lot of those. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, growing up in Chicago is-- You just got to laugh. I mean, it's just like we were just saying, being in the music industry and living in Chicago-- Forget about it. There is no music industry in Chicago. There's an economy, but it's mostly pointed inward, because it's ultimately about playing bars. And maybe you're going to catch a star. There is kind of an indie scene that kind of came up behind, say, Steve Albini. You know? And Jesus said, you know what? I'm going to do this. You know? There is kind of an indie scene that kind of came up behind, say, Steve Albini and Jesus Lizard and-- "Urge Overkill." And what's the label there? I can't think of. It's a really good indie label. I don't know. I mean, when I think of Chicago labels, I think like Chess and the-- No. But there's the one indie label. It's very credible. I can't-- I apologize to the guy, because I should know it off the top of my head. I mean, there is a credible independent scene, but even that is inward facing, because they don't assume anything other than working with them, the community. And my criticism of that community has always been, you know, that community likes to throw rocks over the wall and, you know-- I mean, we don't hear these words like we used to, but back in the day, the sellout thing was a big concept with them, you know? And obviously, it plagued people like Kurt Cobain, like, "Am I selling them out? Am I still integral to the community?" At the end of the day, it's just about reach. And if you can reach people, well, why wouldn't you want to reach people? And I've always complained, you know, from Kim Gordon on down, this idea that, you know, there's a kind of a priest class that decides what's cool and not cool in independent music. Well, we've had now 30-plus years of independent music being a huge part of the music business, so there's nothing wrong with reaching people, you know? It's the promise of independent music that it's egalitarian, and it brings everybody to the table. It doesn't matter your shape, size, color, socioeconomic background. That's the whole point of independent music. Everybody gets a seat at the table. And now, of course, with the rise of home recording, and here we are in-house doing your podcast, I mean, the systems have blown wide open where now everybody can have a seat at the table. That's the whole point of DIY culture, was the Ramones pointed the way that you too could be on stage. You didn't need somebody's permission. Yeah. You didn't need to dress a certain way. You didn't need to act a certain way. You could say whatever you wanted to say. That's the promise, and it's now been fulfilled. So now, let's just all mature and sort of move forward into this new economy. Did anyone ever accuse you of doing it? Of selling out? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's really hard to. Compositionally, the stuff that you would write and continue to write is so left of center. the fact that it became popular is sort of in spite of that like it's like i i don't think you can listen to gish or like not to go you know we can tell some of the journey but you know going to to siamese dream all these songs are really abstract they fit still like uh i feel like in the in a different production some of them could land in and you know the brill building you know they're really strong but they're they are not they're not pop well this is you know uh i'm a big systems guy i don't want to bore your audience the point being is um independent music exists for a vital reason uh and and let's call it the 80s 90s version was it was kind of inward facing no one assumed they were going to get out of of out of the class that they were in so if you were lucky using chicago's example you would headline the metro which was a thousand people okay and all the great bands that i saw come through the metro whether whether it was my bloody valentine or the pixies or happy mondays metro was the gig if you were really big like echoing the money man you'd play the aragon which was 4500 and that was it and then depeche mode who broke through the well they could play an arena sometimes on certain albums that was the economy that we were in so if you were in a guitar band in 1988 like we were your aspirations were someday we can play the club and sell it out so you're making your aspiration to begin was were you thinking oh yeah way that small because there was no economy that i could demonstrate that where you would think we had any upside to reach a higher tier now mtv started to blow that open with 120 minutes and if you were lucky you know so like for example when we toured with the chili peppers in 92 was chili peppers pumpkins pearl jam and what size venues were we playing by the bridge pearl jam was on mtv with the live and we were playing 4000 seaters for those three bands that's the economy we were in so that was like wow i really hit it like sold out shows and people wearing the t-shirts there was no thought you were going to be i mean the fact that foo fighters green day stadium bands i mean that's insane you know why uh why why were you guys only selling four thousand tickets it's hard to imagine when i think of because that was the company i i think i when i listened to um of that era because this is i you know i was born in 80 so uh you know there's probably nothing more impressionable than the you know you were right you were right in the mtv wheelhouse yeah i'm i was born like mtv was released the year i was born you know or maybe the year after yeah so like it was it's such a part of my life but when i think of those bands what's what's fascinating about them is that they're like they're like they're fascinating is right now very few bands can get any sort of pop love like they just aren't crossing over to what pop is but if you listen to pop in the 90s it feels like it was all bands wasn't it or was i just listening to q101 and i'm and i have a skewed version of my life um there's a lot there to unpack so i'll keep it try to keep it simple because again i don't want to bore your audience um they're also nerds so well they're ready they're ready okay god bless okay so let's let's get nerdy if you look at the if you if if paul whiteman i think with with maybe japanese sandman in 1927 i believe was the record was that was the first million seller a million seller in 1927 meant you sold a million dollars worth of records it wasn't a million units okay i think that was the breakthrough record so if you say that's the beginning of like what we would call pop right there's real money in popular music somebody can go into a studio and back then they'd have to do it live and they'd have to do it live and they'd have to do it live so probably for a thousand dollar session by today's economics you could sell a million dollars worth of plastic yeah and that we we're still in that business on some level right okay so every decade 20s 30s you know i don't have to list them all up until the 2000s ish every decade popular music was whoever can climb their way up that ladder and get enough critical mass to bring an audience now let's use nirvana as an example because that's the that's oftentimes cited and obviously so is the the grunge moment alternative breakthrough nevermind i remember sitting with butch vig nevermind was actually selling more albums than every other record in the country and it still wasn't number one because the charts back then were rigged that just because you sold enough records didn't mean you were number one they had other weird stuff that they would do to keep records from being number one they had systems in place to make sure that nobody could kind of bum rush their way to number one you had to have a certain amount of radio play and this and all this other crap that they did so nirvana was the number one record seller for like four or five weeks before they finally crested to number one they actually tried to hold that thing back and who's in front of it like probably someone like a mariah carey who knows who knows um so where am i trying to go with all this there there there are systems of control in place where it's like they don't want certain things kind of bum rushing you know there's even like been some recent incidents where people will sell enough digital copies to technically be number one because they don't want certain things kind of bum rushing you know there's even some recent incidents where people will sell enough digital copies to technically be number one but billboard won't recognize them as number one because they quote unquote don't want people gaming the system so if you just put out a record and you have enough fans because of your podcast and they all go buy your digital single you should be number one but they'll do some weird thing like well this thing didn't report this and this they're still doing it i mean this is the whole issue with bundling tickets and bundling you know bundling in general but you asked me to nerdy so i'm sorry there's a back end point so yeah so here's what i'm after so but somehow in the last 15 or so years the the business at all you know the the unseen faces decided that pop was the only game that they were really interested in as it pertained to the charts okay rock and somebody can fact check me in the comments but based on my understanding rock still sells about 70 of the tickets in in america what yes that's wild okay so so so ask yourself a fundamental existential question why is a business where the rock artists are still the dominant ticket sellers right why in that business is there no representative of rock in the charts on the grammys okay that's real okay got it ask yourself why i'm not i'm not conspiracy theory i'm saying is why do you think that is why do you think rock music it doesn't get its due okay uh quick answer i think that when social media really clicked in pun intended right clicks okay the social pressure the the the massive audience that shows up for a taylor swift thing right her ability to amass a social audience beyonce when the music business saw that they said right this is where the business is going this is where the business is going so it was no longer hey hey here's a jump ball whoever can get to the top of that mountain you're going to be number one and you're going to get the benefits of this holy designation of number one i mean when i was number one with melancholy we debuted at number one we were truly number one there was no you know i mean that wasn't rigged we sold this the records you're supposed to sell okay so forever i'll be a guy who said oh i had a number one record the chance of a rock artist having a number one record in this culture is zero zero ask yourself why when they did a tribute to ozzy this year youngblood standing in the crowd watching and he just won a grammy for doing an ozzy song live at the last sabbath show which i was also a part of what like what who who's making those decisions okay what i'm saying is the the the music business at all is right now behind the curve that what's coming from the rock side which has had to go back to ground and get tough again and not rely on charts and not rely on radio stations to get them over now there's going to be a whole new crew of artists that aren't relying on charts and aren't relying on approval and once rock kicks back in it's going to wipe the pop thing out again because not because they won't have numbers and they won't have social backing they will taylor swift will still be able to amass an army whenever she flicks her beautiful hand god bless but rock is going back to the primary thing which is creating emotional connection you cannot game music where you can remove the emotional connection like a jenga thing and make it strictly a numbers game i think does that make sense is it at least i know i know i'm giving you a cloud answer but does it make sense in its totality yes i i mean i'm the co-chair of the songwriter composer one of the grammys and i see how those things are constructed and i don't think there's like a a svengali kind of no no not that you're saying i call it group i call it group thing that that may be i i will say this i think that the the next move is also going to be rock and will will be anything analog i think everyone every fan out there when you know uh there are songwriters that are very savvy young excited to help push some initiatives one being maybe like a toggle switch on spotify and apple that removes ai created content so it doesn't land in your algorithm and what because i think these this pushback of a abundance of digital slop is going to be the guys in it who learn how to play guitar and play in a garage and i don't even i you know lyric wise or whatever the the uh authenticity is in in and the poetry that people write is almost uh what will be as important uh in the future i think than it's ever been just because i think everyone just wants analog i think everyone craves this this this is created by a human sound what i'm suggesting and try to summarize is the music business in its group thing made a decision that pop was going to be the game because of numbers right but now what we're finding with social media influencers is numbers don't mean anything it's whether or not the people who are listening or watching actually give a shit yeah and will then animate and do things with that emotion so in new social media economy it's better to have five thousand followers that will buy a t-shirt support you go to a gig then fifty thousand who just click and never do shit at all in your in your in your direction do you feel that from so can i can i connect one thing please because it dovetails with what we talked about for 15 years in this town i was told my only value was connected to the peak years that i had in this town between 1992 and 1990 whatever 99 right i had to go out and prove new proof of and now my value yes that's part of my value but my value was far greater than that that's why i'm saying rock artists have had to go back out of the system figure it out and now we're coming again and it's going to be like a marauding army running over the pop kids those smart ones have already started figuring it out and are lining themselves up more like alternative artists and you can hear in their songwriting and their production so the smart ones are already ready to make the adjustment who are the smart modern rock bands in your opinion um uh bring me the horizon uh would be one that i would point to uh sleep token because what they've done is they've they found a way to exist in a pop economy which is hey duke ellington pop just means popular yeah write great songs yeah going back to 27 and like you gotta still write great armstrong we get into still gotta write great songs okay but but but but they carry the mark of people who understand what people are going through in the world pop by and large is is a is a is a is a show right i'm not saying rock is in a show but pop is predicated on the idea that you can amass social energy from all you know fashion uh hot hot takes on social issues you know i mean it becomes less about identity and more about like hey you know we're all in this together you know i have you know my army you know like uh swifties and the and the and the beehives and all this stuff you know i'm not saying rock is in a show but pop is predicated on the idea that you can amass social energy from all you know fashion hot hot takes on social issues you know i mean it becomes less about identity and more about like hey you know we're all in this together you know i have you know my army you know like uh swifties and the and the and the beehives and all this stuff rock is the complete opposite it's like no we're the same we're the same you know you know you said i'm from deerfield i'm from glendale heights in illinois like you know what i'm not trying to pretend i'm from you know some other planet i mean i'm i'm a fucking nerd who was a good songwriter and knew what i was doing in in 1991 when gish comes out well maybe let's go to to uh 93 95 sure wherever you want to go like the smashing pumpkins don't you think the fans would be the wouldn't they be called the pumpkins wouldn't they be called like wouldn't there be some version of that that i think that virgin back there with pumpkin heads maybe the pumpkin heads but like it's not like you know they're they're i i think the difference was this is that you would go see these um i don't i i know i know some of those accounts those those the more the swifties what what they've done really well is they they have really highlighted a lot of other artists throughout their okay this thing to bring up other things in a way that you know i mean you're talking about when you're talking about chili peppers smashing pumpkins and pearl jam it's like it's just this wild thing where it was like yeah all the fans were friends with each other like nobody went to that concert was like fuck you guys like your band sucks yeah like it seems like everyone's like the genre was incredible if i pick up what you're talking about it's like it's like it's like it's like putting down it's it's it has more to do with the the difference in social economies back then alternative people identified like we're kind of a tribe we're amassing and we want to push these things forward because it extols our values or it represents something we feel or you know the guy on stage is like the guy i went to high school with or my boyfriend or girlfriend or there was an identity thing heck when i saw metallica and and james headfield was only like two years older than me with like you know we had you know he had pimples just like i did i was like that could be me i there was an identity thing that went on it wasn't this uh yes queen you know i'm an untouchable goddess i'm never going to get old i'm never going to age we're we're going to live in perpetual you know perfection or something can i suggest that there's a difference in gender that i think that there's a push for the music business going all the way back to you know uh you you can go through diana ross and whatnot and the the objective of the business is to create archetypes around women that that make them feel untouchable whereas a lot of the male artists um excluding maybe the younger sort of uh uh maybe boy bands or those the young but like the credible male artists in many ways are not pushed to be uh superheroes outside of their skill okay i hear what you're saying but then how do you explain courtney i i mean i think you're i think courtney's authenticity in that world is like is the thing that makes her uh an anomaly in that space right i mean there are so few people who who but she is she i mean how how do you describe courtney love in within the pantheon of alternative artists well that's a complicated one because you know she's she's been stuck more with the you know the the same thing that they stuck with yoko ono who was a highly highly credible uh performance and visual artist before she ever met john lennon and i was friends with marianne faithful who was there the night that john and yoko met on the ladder as john lennon went to the top of the ladder and looked at the whatever was painted on the ceiling wait what is that story that's what the night john and yoko met was at an art gallery in england i think 66 john went to the gallery he was married to his wife who he had julian with len with that's cynthia lennon and um and that's the night john and yoko met and yoko was with i think the guy maybe from the art gallery was her husband and that's the night john and yoko met and obviously changed the course of the beatles and in many ways pop history right um and there was this instant connection artist artist i mean he was she was a highly credible uh visual performance artist and he was obviously the biggest rock star by by what we would they didn't call people rock stars back then uh he was the biggest musical artist in the world or in the biggest musical artist band and you had this meeting of the minds somebody john who highly was seeking some kind of credibility he couldn't get with success and yoko who had a greater vision of how to reach people and obviously imbued that in john and he ended up writing songs like imagine i don't think he would ever written that song without yoko so in our generation you have kurt and courtney you know when courtney and kurt met and and they had met before um uh i i'd met courtney so they did have some connection there um uh courtney was a was a highly regarded female artist with you know seemingly no commercial upside but had you know uber credibility first record produced by kim gordon sonic youth uh independent label you know she burst on the scene she was the talk of all independent music and then and then uh here's kurt who at that moment was the biggest rock star of his time it's very similar dynamics and and and they literally did the same thing to her they turned to her into a heretic and a witch but that is the archetype her archetype wasn't an angel her her her archetype that made the but are you saying are you saying interested was because she played she she didn't put the the archetype thrust on her is that she's the devil that she's the she's the dark she's the dark she's the witch sure she is that arc that is what i'm saying is that i think that in history didn't nobody was like uh i don't remember i don't remember thinking that uh you or anthony kiedis or eddie vetter had had had to be an angel or a devil i misunderstood where you were going i'm saying that that that that even in that world the commercialization of of courtney's career of that time and i'm sure that there's you know i don't remember when what labels she wasn't also on geffen what they were they were i think she was also on geffen i think they were on geffen you know like that's not that's not by accident that there's this the the imagery around it is is playing an archetype okay i misunderstood so that's why i was going off in a different tangent yeah yeah i i just think that that's that's a a but are you saying the pop stars are are sort of presented in in opposition to the thought are they presented as angels they're or devils like i think you know you look at the the you know and and there are some male artists who go all the way there the you know the marilyn manson's of the world like played a character that were like went all the way there but i do think that the career arcs of the madonnas of going all the way angel or devil angel devil okay taylor swift okay i understand yeah is unique to being female in this space i do agree with you and i think that there's a lot of pressure to be something you think i'm just curious do you think that that's because labels were predominantly and have been predominantly male run and so they're they're they're asking the artists to sort of fall in line with the best way they think those artists can be market because here let me just throw this out there was that sort of beautiful moment at the end of the 90s uh let's call it the lilith fair kind of movement there were suddenly a bunch of hot girls playing piano right sure okay but they were presented in the beginning as hey i'm a hot girl playing piano and i got this beautiful song two years later they're on the cover of fhm showing skin because that's where that economy was going and in many ways it destroyed the credibility that they seemingly had just built a couple years prior by hey i'm a i'm a female artist i'm i'm presenting my music with complete integrity yeah i that's interesting i mean when i think of that era and i and when i think of lilith fair and i'm thinking of sarah mclaughlin or i'm thinking of uh you know um emily lou harris was probably part of that obviously uh um indigo girls and stuff i don't where's the which which artists are you referring to i'd rather not say their names because i think i don't yeah i don't want to i don't want to well i don't want to presume that they were they they were they were or they weren't uh engaging in let's call it overt marketing to make sure that people paid attention to them yeah i mean i know of some other chicago artists that that we well whatever i i think that you're not well it's fair this fair example is the chicago uh to my best of my knowledge and i know elizabeth she never she never sexualized herself she was she was overtly sexual in her music and that was part of what attracted a lot of people to her both male and female great songwriter uh groundbreaking music um but she never seemed to turn the corner where she felt she had to sexualize herself more in an image way yeah but i saw that happen with some of the lilith and people and i was shocked because what i the way i read that was somebody called them up and said you better figure this out you know i mean like basically what you're bringing to the table isn't enough yeah i don't again i don't know who that person is unless we can talk off camera how's that yeah fair enough no no no i don't mean the person who did the the changing i'm telling the person who tells you know hey you should be more sexual you should be more what i'm saying is in a in a in a predominantly male dominated industry yeah you know i mean yeah are women under particular pressures to to market themselves in a particular way and i obviously have more knowledge in the 90s than i would do now now um well i think one thing that's interesting and this is different in the pop space than it is uh you know uh i mentioned like uh uh mariah in the 90s whatever she wrote something like uh i think 18 of her 19 number ones she wrote like she was like a real writer and i think the the one of the and by the way the one that she didn't was the cover of of uh um jackson five so you know that i think there's this image that that these women's are being forced to do the archetypes be in an inauthentic way and i think most of those people that i mentioned are actually great songwriters as a writer what's um so exciting you know i write a lot of musicals i write a lot of hundred percent songs there aren't that many hundred percent writers in this current space yeah and here you are somebody who you know a lot of times there are producers who take publishing there's all these people who take publishing but man you produced a lot of your shit too and a lot of the big stuff so like there's not a lot of arguing that what what a real songwriter is and you're a real songwriter when you look at young versions of billy corgan today how do you explain a path where you can make a living doing music are you saying if i was 20 years old today what choices would i make is that sure is that a fair way to yeah i mean there's there's another kid like your kids if they went to uh this the high school that they could go to would be going to the exact same school district i grew up in yeah and if i i didn't there was no uh music industry i i don't know why i started buying books about the music industry in deerfield illinois but i i still don't know to this day why i well here we bought a cam four track and started figuring out how to do it was it with portaflex or we're going way back i still have all of those tapes you know now they have uh plug-in emulations of those pre's so that you can get that sound again oh my god when i was doing it back then in the 80s i was like i can't wait to get rid of this sound you know dude the distortion that it would do is incredible you every time you plug in a guitar just like it's kind of amazing um okay so you're talking to you know your kids decide to do music let's say that how about this is it is it is it right to frame your question as what advice would i give to the 20 year old version of my type of artist yeah okay um number one i would say if you're if you're an idiosyncratic artist and you have a vision you have to absolutely build your own world and you have to build a world that cannot be easily imitated yeah both those things need to happen so you need to have real chops as a writer you need to write in a way that only you can write and then in a way that cannot be imitated that's it otherwise you will die the world building is so essential to an artist right now but what you did well throughout your career is build worlds within each album well that was that was that was based on the beatles and that was based on bowie and i couldn't have imagined how it was going to sort of work a long time ago so i'm going to say that's it i'm going to say that's term because in those fallow years between say 2001 and 2016 it actually worked against me because in the new coming social economy being a band with one sound and we know who they are because i played in a generation with many of them that actually was to their benefit but now in this new emerging economy having variance is actually working quite well yeah so bowie and and excuse me bowie and the beatles pointed the way that you can be love me do and and uh you know uh strawberry fields or in bowie's case ziggy start us and let's dance so that's that was i mean i i ripped that whole cloth that wasn't like that wasn't some inspiration i had i was like i want that and i would say to the band we need to be a different band on every record i mean you you really took the storytelling to heart and when you too far maybe but no man especially now if you did it like it if i were to go and take you know these the double albums the triple albums the rock opera yeah it's a are you approaching the composition of an album from a short story version how do you how do you create the outline that becomes the outline of the album and how do you create the outline that becomes the outline that becomes these epic stories yeah that's a that's that's the right question but it's actually sort of a more broad concept if you don't mind me exploring and then if i'm not doing a good job boil me down i got you because you're asking how i get there but i don't get there the way you think i'm getting there yeah okay uh number one uh i read uh two influential books on me about picasso i wish i could tell you the names of the books the person i think wrote four books on picasso on picasso's life and influence and the atmosphere that he grew up in so they're easily found if you want to dig around but the idea that was so inspiring to me was it said picasso existed in in a in a social and artistic economy that unbeknownst the mythology actually influenced him so when picasso was a was a known artist in paris in the 20s that the art dealer would come down and say hey those pictures you did of the of the of the trees those are selling can you paint some more tree pictures and picasso would just pay more tree pictures because he needed the bread so i was like okay that sounds like the music business that sounds like somebody in an office go bullet with butterfly wings sure did good i'd sure like rat in the cage too would be really good right about now we've all had those experiences however implied or not implied so for me it starts with the concept of i need to i need to build a world that exists on every level not just a musical level not just a musical marketing level but a world that has sustained so it's it's it's what is the what is the emotional narrative of the record what is the the look of the record uh what what do this do can the songs exist in their own oxygen without the production can the ox can the production exist in its own oxygen even if you don't like the songs so you're for lack of better word you're branding every aspect of the of the era because you don't know what out of the era is going to sustain yeah now that's the that's the world building right i used to have a girlfriend and say she she would accuse me of being arrogant and this is the way she would accuse me of being arrogant she's like you think everything you touch is important and i was like yeah because everything i touch has value i just don't know how much value Well, this is the other thing, like in the end, you know, obviously, I don't know if your kids have totally discovered all the music that you've done, but like the best thing I've ever written is, and I've talked about this before, I have this concept album called The Wrong Man, which has now gone to stage and other stuff. But it tells a story and it's like the collective streams on that is probably about a million streams. I have multiple songs that are in the billions. And like the best thing I have is a story that's well structured with the full thing. And to me, that's the most successful thing I've ever done. on a piece of paper, it's obvious where your value is. Your value is with the songs that have streamed a billion. But 50 years from now, and hopefully you're still here with us, the thing you say is the thing that you feel has the most value, that might be the thing that's actually still paying the bills, where the songs will have fallen by the wayside because they're cultural moments or the world changes in terms of how people consume their media. So if you're truly an artist, which I like to think I am, you must believe that all work that you create has value. Has equal value? No, no, value. Okay? It isn't up to you to decide, but you are in a relationship with the audience. And I'll give a perfect example. I wrote a song for the Batman movie with Arnold and Uma Thurman and Batman Forever. I think George Clooney was Batman in that one. Okay. So I think it was Warner Brothers maybe is my memory. That's right. So they hired us or whatever, commissioned us, and I had this idea of writing, having the same song played fast and slow. We worked with Nellie Hooper, who came out of the massive attack world, had done Sinead O'Connor, Nothing Compares to You, that Nellie did that production, that stark, beautiful production. So Nellie was coming from a completely different world than I was in, and the band was coming off of Melancholy, so I wanted to do the rock version of the song. We did that. We made a video. Joel Schumacher directed the video. The whole thing turned out to not work. It just didn't click. The song didn't click. It just didn't work. The slow version of the song, the fast version song was called The End is the Beginning, and the slow version was called The Beginning is the End. Same song, just voiced completely differently. Nellie really leaned into the slow version, and it's got this menacing cinematic tone. Okay. Song comes out on the soundtrack. Again, we did the video and the whole thing for the rock version. Nobody cared. K-Rock didn't play it. It was a disaster. Okay. The slow version, in the time between what I'm about to tell you, between the release and this thing that happened, nobody but nobody ever stopped me in the airport and talked to me about the slow version of the song. No fans said they loved the song. Nothing. Okay. So fast forward, I don't know, 15 years, 20 years, it becomes the song for the Watchmen trailer, when it was the Watchmen movie. Wow. People sing that song. I'm getting chills telling you this story. People sing that song connected with those visuals. It went from a nothing, nobody gave a shit to an instant classic overnight. A song that was like on the cutting room floor. Okay. So I've experienced somebody picking a song out of nowhere, and who knows how they even found the song, whoever did the trailer. So, and then fast forward with me playing Madison Square Garden, sold out, I'm on stage playing that song to an audience that knows the song. Beautiful. Where two years before, if I played it, they would have been like, what the fuck is this? Yeah. So that's what I'm saying. It's not up for us to assess value. Now we all, we're human, you know, that one's better than this, but sometimes we're just wrong. You have to trust your artistic voice enough to say, if I'm going to put it in the world, I have to at least in a stewardship way, believe that at some point it's going to find its place. When you look at your discography, do you think of something like Adam, which is like, you know, a triple, for your honest, triple, triple record, 33 songs. Yeah. But it's a, it's a rock opera. Well, that's, that's, I, I use that to sort of explain what it was. Yeah. It's a concept record, you know, but rock opera I knew would sort of poke people in the ribs. So I went with that. I mean, yeah, but like, you know, I know, I know the effort it takes to make 33 songs to tell a story. It's fucking hard. Okay. But, but when I did the, when I did the rock opera, never in a million years did I think I'd be on stage with the Lyric Opera in Chicago, seven sold out shows doing melancholy as an opera. Yeah. Right. Okay. So now when I talk to people in the, in the opera world, because I'm just about to do more shows of, of the melancholy opera, both this year and next year, this year in Europe, next year in America. Okay. They're going, what else have you got? So now I've got three works already composed, Melancholy, Machina, and Autumn that are voiced for the stage. But when I made them as rock records, okay, I didn't get the 3000 word review in the Guardian telling everybody Jesus was walking on water because I wrote this great work. If I went with what the world tells me, those works don't have the value that I think they have. So at the end of the day, what confidence do I have as a writer to say, I believe in what I've done? Again, it's, it's, I'm not saying we don't live in the moment we're in. We, of course we all do, but on some level, the artist has to be able to remove themselves from that moment and sort of say, I think there's something here that's of greater value. This is the process thing that I love about music. I go and I shop songs now that are 15 years old all the time, you know, and it's there because I know the song's great and the right person is going to cut these songs. And it's like, to me, the exciting part is that few people know those songs. Once the songs are out in there, they, you know, some big artist cuts them. I don't care. Okay. But let me give you an example. Back to Courtney for a second. I'm on the phone with Courtney circa 1994, right? Right in that era, you know, you know, they were the prom queens on the cover of every magazine. I'm on the phone with Courtney. I said, I'm going to do a BBC radio session. Courtney says, make sure you do a cover. They love that. So I go on my little record stack, which I didn't have a lot of money. So it was only about this big, if you want to feature one video. Okay. And I'm flipping through, and I come across the Fleetwood Mac record. I take it out, and I find Landslide. Never been a single, right? Wasn't considered a classic. Wasn't played on the radio. I do the song, right? BBC is hardcore union. You only have four hours, right, to do the session. There was technical issues, humming a microphone. So by the time we were going to record Landslide, there was only 20 minutes left in the session. The engineer, who doesn't give a shit about the Smashing Pumpkins, says, you might hang it up. You're not going to record a song in 20 minutes. I said, well, I'm going to use all 20 minutes. I went in a booth, literally stuck, like, whatever mic in front of the acoustic guitar, recorded the acoustic guitar, no click, live, then had him play it back, did two versions of the solo, picked the one version, then did two takes of the vocal, made it just across the line, enough time for me to listen to both takes. I said, use the front half of this vocal and the back half of this vocal. And we put it out on a B-sides record, and it became a hit. And then, after that, then Stevie Nicks is on the phone thanking me for all the publishing money that she got. And then, since then, it's been a hit now four times over. I'm not taking credit. She wrote the song. It's a brilliant song. But I cracked the code on the thing where, if I hadn't cracked the code, would the Dixie Chicks have had a hit? It's like, that's what I'm saying to, if you're, because I assume you have a lot of writers that watch your show. Don't let them tell you that it doesn't, just because it's on a record. Some of the most famous George Gershwin songs were in shows on Broadway where they're total bombs. They only lasted three weeks and the show closed. I mean, this is one of the things why I've been arguing that I think that the Grammy should actually give a best song for musicals and not just best album, because I think for that exact reason, the song may supersede the body of work in that capacity. But that's a crazy story. Does Courtney Love take credit for? Courtney, we're very friendly these days. So I'm saying this with love. Courtney takes credit for songs that I wrote before I met her and said the songs about her. Like what? I don't know. She'll take credit for songs. She'll take credit. She'll say songs that are written about her that weren't written about her. And then she'll say songs were written about her before I knew her. That's great. How did you meet Courtney Love? It's a funny story. We were on the same label and they sent me a seven inch or something. Hole was putting out a seven inch. We were on the same label, Caroline, at the time. And I saw her picture on the back and I thought, I need to meet this person. I just had a sense of a feeling. I don't know how to explain it. And then maybe a month later, they were coming to town. And so that's, I went to see them and they stayed at my apartment and we're still, here we are 35 years later, still working together, still friends. Was that post, Gish? Or is that? That would have been probably post Gish. Yeah. I think we, Gish had come out at that point. Let's, let's tell a little bit of your story. Cause not all of our people are aware of like the order of things. And even it was nice for me to have a refresher. So You spend the 70s in Chicago through most of your childhood. I was saying before, I was like, I mean, that's John Wayne Gacy at his prime. I was actually telling my kids the other day about when I was their age, Gacy was an active serial killer. And it was known there was an active serial killer going on. They just didn't know who it was. And about a mile or so from where I lived, they found a kid, sadly, dumped in a river or something. And it was purported at the time that maybe it was connected to the serial killer. They never connected that murder with Gacy. So we were living in the ambience of that time. And I remember it very clearly because we were told, like, don't get in the cars. And it was like there was this vibe out there that there's this monster at loose. Of course, we know the story now, but at the time, we lived with that. The grime of Chicago and the Chicago suburbs in the 70s and early 80s is really intense. And at least, I mean, that's the image that I have of it. And you were saying about how your dad was kind of all over the place doing some crazy shit. How did you learn to be so proficient at an instrument during that kind of exterior junk? Yeah. I had a flash of inspiration. I saw a friend playing a guitar in a basement one day, and I went to my father and I said, I want to play guitar. And he said, okay, if you can get the money, you know, we'll get you a guitar. So he kind of put it on me. I don't think he thought I was serious. It's not like he lent me a guitar and said, let's see if you're going to stick with it. Then I'll get you a guitar. It was like proof of concept. Get some money, get a guitar, and then let's see if you play the thing. So it's a long story. But I did get a guitar. And my father finally delivered it to me. And my father was the type of person who had no patience for anything. So he literally hands me the guitar and he's going out the door because we didn't live together at that point. And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, I don't even know what to do. Like, can you show me how to plug into an amp and, you know, like the basics? He goes, okay, okay, okay. What do you want to learn? And I go, House of the Rising Sun animals. Because I love the guitar. I love the guitar line. And to this day, I still love, like, the flipping of the major and minor modes. It's in my music all over the place. And so we sat for five minutes, said, hold your hands like this. Here's how it goes. Here's the chords. Got to go. Boom, out the door. So I had my five-minute lesson. And now I've got the guitar in my hands. You know, this would I consider a weapon now. And nobody was home. And I had that sort of moment of like, okay, I know nobody in my world right now thinks I'm going to take this thing seriously. I loved music. I listened to music obsessively up to this point. So I was the type of guy who would have a record on eight hours a day. I mean, I was literally that guy. So I was like, okay, if I'm going to do this, I'm really going to do it. So I made this weird decision that day. I'm going to play four hours a day. I don't know why I picked that. I don't know why I picked four hours a day. I would time myself. And I would get up in the middle of the night, play it in the middle of the night, in the dark, no light, like, and just learn how to play the guitar without seeing it. I was obsessed. And I played four. It's a true story. I played four hours a day for four years. Four years in a row. And when I hit the four-year anniversary, I was like, I'm good. And then I was still practicing, but not like I did then. When did you write your first song? About 18, probably. So you were that good at guitar, and you still were patient enough not to try to write something? I never thought I would be a songwriter. I wanted to be a gunslinger type. I was into Yngwie Malmsteen, Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhodes. I thought I was going to be a guitar player. So in my mind, writing was writing a riff. What year is this at? I guess I got the guitar probably 81. And so by junior, senior year of high school, I start conceptually wrapping my head around the idea of writing songs. I had a metal band. We had no lead singer. So I would write riff-based songs, like Iron Maiden. This riff to this riff to this riff. There's clips on YouTube of me playing at 17. I mean, it explains, because what I call identifiers, or even just what Beethoven's Fifth starts, with some sort of refrain. And all your songs, you know what the song is before you even start singing. Very few of your songs, both as the band solo, very few of them start with you singing. Most of them start with a guitar part or something that gives an identifier. That's Tony Iommi's influence on me. Tony, to me, is like a masterful painter. Somehow with riffs, he paints this celestial picture in my mind. So I'm forever chasing. Tony, at least emotionally, not always literally. But Tony set the. And he was influenced by Dvorak. I think he talked about Holst, maybe Nine Planets or whatever. This idea that, you know, Tony was attracted to that, and he said he was looking for that in the guitar. Oh, that's cool. So that's how I see it. It's like, basically, it's a classical approach to rock. Your compositions are all very classical-based in many ways. Like, you clearly studied music theory of some sort, whether you meant to or not. No, actually, it's a crazy story. I studied no music theory, taught myself, and my father only gave me two lessons in my entire life. He arranged with some guy to give me some lessons, you know? So I went to the guy's house, first lesson I played, and then the guy said, okay, come back again. And I brought my guitar, and he said, well, you don't need that. And then he just sat at the piano and played chords. And I said, what are you doing? He said, well, you obviously. You need to study music theory. You've already taught yourself all this stuff. And he was a collegiate-level music theory teacher. And he was like, I don't know how you learned all this stuff. I taught myself music theory on my own. I have no training. I can't read notes, nothing. I mean, you know, Da Vinci taught himself a lot of things in a summer. Yeah, I don't. You know, it's like what you taught. Like, you taught yourself your. It was innate, or it was hard work, but like. I think it's math. It's math. Yeah, it's totally math. I think it's math. I think I'm just good at math. I think once I understood the mathematical principles of theory, then it just kind of worked in my brain, yeah. You know, I was. Or as we like to joke, lots of sevenths and ninths. Yeah, there you go. You know, when the band starts, it's 1988, so there's a jump between 81, playing guitar, doing all that. Like, what is. How do you meet. How do you meet Jimmy? How do you meet the band? NMPA is our lead sponsor yet again. What is the National Music Publishers Association? What do publishers have to do with songwriters anyway? Well, unlike artists who can be unsigned artists, there is no such thing as an unsigned writer. You can be a self-published, a co-published, or a published writer. Publishers only make money if songwriters make money. So NMPA goes and fights for you. They go to Congress. They go and support the community. They fight DSPs to get you paid more. That's what they do. They fight for you, and they fight for this podcast. So thank you for fighting for songwriters, NMPA. Thank you for fighting for us, too. Okay, so I use Splice. And I'm pretty sure every producer who listens to this uses Splice. But if you don't, you need to start using Splice. They have the most incredible licensing library that you can go through for any kind of samples you can think of. But they take care of their original creators. In fact, they just came out with a beta version of their AI suite. Unlike its competitors that we know that may not take care of the original creators. Every time you use Splice's AI tool, it triggers a licensing event for those original creators. So there's not a better company that I can think of right now that you can use where you can use the efficiency of AI and also know that you're taking care of the creators. And that is Splice. Okay. Quick story, origin story. James and I met through a mutual guy. And we kind of were going to do a goth band. That fell apart. And then James and I still worked together. I met Darcy. I got in an argument with her on the street. Another true story. How did that happen? We saw a band. I didn't know she was there. But I got a ticket to see a band called the John Butcher Axis. It was a Wednesday night. It was probably August. It was super hot. Came outside the venue. Was just standing there trying to cool off. And I heard, this woman behind me saying how much she enjoyed the show. And I just thought the show was terrible. I don't know why. I just, and I feel bad because I don't like to denigrate artists. I just, at that moment, I just did not like the show. Something about it. And so I just hear this woman going on about how great the show is. And I whirled around and I said, I can't possibly believe that you like the show. And our first meeting was an argument. Which pretty much summed up our relationship. Yeah. Very interesting, right? So that's how we met. And then Jimmy, the Pumpkins were playing as a three-piece with a drum machine. And a guy I'd worked with in my previous band, which was called The Marked, saw me playing as a three-piece and said, do you want a drummer? And I said, oh yeah, I would love to have a drummer. He said, I know this guy. And Jimmy was literally playing in like a wedding party band, like a band you'd hire to play parties and stuff. And that's when I met Jimmy. And Jimmy knew zero about alternative music. He knew everything about Rush, Deep Purple. He knew all that stuff. He could play any of that stuff, which for me was like perfect. Cause I, I spoke that, that language too. But he, if you said Bauhaus, you know, you could, The Cure, he'd never heard any of those bands. Yeah. So he's suddenly in an alternative band playing a style of music he has no knowledge for. That's probably what makes it so, I mean, you have like a, you know, almost like a jazz drummer playing and like, or it's not jazz, but he's like, he's so advanced. This is incredible. He's just, he's, it's, it's like, um, the best thing I could say about, uh, meeting Jimmy Chamberlain in 88, it was like, if I told you, Hey, like, I know this guy plays in, the band was called JP and the Gats, Cats. They literally would play like weddings and street fairs and they were literally like a party band. And, uh, and I remember one time I saw Jimmy playing and he was playing Green Eyed Lady, you know, do, do, boo, do, do, if you know that song. Uh, and, and even in the first practice, I thought he was just a good drummer. He was playing these ticky tacky new wave beats. And then he did something and I was like, and it's like that, you know, that bad moment in the Netflix movie where the camera zooms out. I was like, I literally just found a savant, like a needle in a haystack. And by the way, the guy doesn't know he's a savant. Even better. He just knows he's the better drummer in the neighborhood. I, you know, I, I recognized immediately. I found a world-class drummer hiding in plain sight and nobody knows who this guy is. It's not like he was in the other cool alternative band and I stole him. I mean, he, I mean, instantly this guy is the best drummer in Chicago that nobody's ever heard of. And I'm like, he slowly stumbled into my world. But, you know, to know that if you grew up in the suburbs, how are you experienced? I guess at that point you're old enough where you're going, you're, were you living in the city at that point? Yeah. Yeah. Um, were you always a Cubs fan? Yeah. Yeah. No choice. My grandmother was an obsessive fan. In fact, I'll tell you a quick Cubs story if you want to hear it. Yeah. I'm, I. Okay. So Randy Huntley, who's one of the most famous, was on the famous team that collapsed the 69 Cubs. Randy Huntley, for my grandmother's generation, was the Cubs catcher. And that's back then when the guys would be with the team their whole careers, generally speaking. So my grandmother was the type, we would get to the game, wait for the gates to open at 1030 in the morning, go and sit and wait for an hour. And then the teams would come out and have batting practice and field practice, then go back in for a while. And the game would start at 120. So we would be there from 1030 until literally they would shove us out the gates. And then we would go wait by the cars to see the players come out in their street clothes and get into the cars just to wave at them. That was my grandmother. So we're at Wrigley Field and, uh, and there's nobody in the thing. They're literally not there. They're literally, you know, flipping up the seats and sweeping up the garbage. And she doesn't want to leave because for her, the ambience of Wrigley Field is like being in church. And she spots somebody, a grown man across the way, and she goes, oh my God, grabs my hand and drags me up to meet this gentleman. It's Randy Huntley. I didn't know because he was before my time. I was still a little kid. She's weeping copiously like she's meeting Jesus Christ because it's Randy Huntley. And he's like, uh, you know, how are you doing? Nice to meet you. Hey, little kid. Okay. And then he bangs. He bangs off. Fast forward 35 years later. I don't know. Hey, uh, I'm in Arizona playing a gig. Hey, I'm friends with Randy Huntley. He's going to come down to the gig with me. You'll, you cool with Randy coming to the gig with me? And Randy's in my dressing room and I, I'm talking with him. We're talking about the current Cubs at the time. And, and I go, I got to tell you the story. And I told him the story and he goes, well, he, he starts to feel bad. Like I don't remember. And I said, come on. I know you don't remember. It's like, I wouldn't remember. I said, but the way you treated my grandmother, I am forever in your debt. You are forever my hero because you don't know what that team meant to my grandmother. And the fact that you treated her with respect is something I, it's like, talk about a full circle moment as a Cubs fan. I mean, that's up there with me for when the Cubs win in the world series, because that honored my grandmother. And she's the one who gave me the love of the team, which is if you love the team, if you really love the team, you ride or die. And I've been criticized for criticizing the Cubs. And I don't want celebrities to show up when the Cubs are winning and somehow don't show up when the Cubs are losing. You were a good baseball player. I was pretty good. I was, pitching was probably my best thing, but then I blew out my arm. What's applicable with songwriting that you learned from being a, an athlete? I used to have these conversations with the band because the band didn't always understand my attitude when we were in the heat of the moment of, I call it on the floor. On the floor for me is four band members in a room. We always practice facing each. Other in a circle. So imagine our amps are actually feeding into the middle of the room. So it's all really loud and intense. We're not, we didn't, we wouldn't line up like on stage for a cross. So like the bass amp is blasting in my face. James's guitar amps blasting into my left ear. I mean, we were, it was an intense situation and I used to say, because they didn't like when I would get too kind of a bare knuckle in that environment. I was like, this is like a game. Do you understand that we're on the court? There's only so much time and somebody is going to win. And somebody's going to lose. Okay. So if I have a, if I have a guitar idea, beat me. That's the world I grew up in, in sports. You get on the court. Like if you and I would be playing, say, pickup basketball and we grew up in the same neighborhood. Well, one game you're on the other side, you're on the other team and I'm going to kick your ass because that's what you do. And at the end of the game, we shake hands and we go grab a Coke or whatever. And then the next game, me and you are on the same team. That's the way people bond in sports. It's competitive, but it's. It doesn't mean you're against each other. It means you're pushing each other to be better than you would be without the pressure of the situation. The band, by and large, did not like the pressure of the situation. And what I would say is if you think I'm the pressure, go look outside the door. We're a band. Okay. So let's, it's not 2026 story. This is 1988. We're from Chicago. We have no money. We're playing a style of music people in Chicago don't even like. There's no musical. Uh, thing I can compare it to in the culture that sounds like we sound. So I can't even say, well, we sound like this band and they're doing well. We can't get booked anywhere. Okay. Uh, Darcy's sister worked at a club. We couldn't even get booked at the club Darcy's sister worked at because the booker hated us. Okay. I mean, we were, and we had no contacts in the music business. I knew one guy who was a promo guy from Mercury records. That was my lone contact. In. In the entire, my father had no contacts in the music business. I knew one guy. And the only reason I knew him is because I babysit his kids. And his claim to fame was he was the guy who broke the Anita Baker record in 80, whatever. Okay. That's my, that's my entire contact to the music business. And I'm sitting somewhere in a, in an unheated garage or an unheated warehouse, trying to convince a band. We will one day be one of the biggest bands in the world. Okay. So I would say to them, if you can't handle the pressure in here, what are we going to do when we get through? I mean, the crazy thing is that it's, it is totally crazy. Well, I mean, I grew up in a, in a time where you had to be well rehearsed before you go and you, you record music. Like part of that rehearsal process is the creative engine that becomes the band. And I've never thought of approaching a rehearsal. Like we're playing against each other. Oh yeah. And that's, that's a unique perspective. I can see where like that discord is what creates. But here's the thing. We never, and to this day, nobody believes me. We never argued about music. We argued about everything else, movies, food, travel. We just didn't argue about music. Somehow we did not argue. It's the strangest thing to me, even today. Somehow these three knuckleheads agreed with this knucklehead. Of how to do it. Yeah. And when I would say, okay, we're done with that album. Now we're going to go in a completely different direction. They go, okay. Be, you know. So that's, that's, that's the one thing I can always point to with my group is somehow we somehow believed in something that was greater than ourselves. And that led us to, and ultimately we accepted the competitive atmosphere. They didn't like it, but it obviously was successful for, for us or for me, maybe because I was the main writer. It's also similar that a lead singer would be a pitcher. Or a lead singer would be a catcher. That's why I love about pitching. I love that. It's all in your, you know, as they say, baseball is the only sport. Can we go back to the Cubs for a second? Where the defense has the ball. I see if you can remember this pitcher. I think his first name was Josh. He pitched for the Marlins. He was the ace of the Marlins during when the, when the Cubs, the Bartman series. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 2003. Yeah. So. Not. No. I can't remember his name. Price was third. Right. But he was, he was there. He was there. He was their alpha pitcher. This is. Thank you. Thank you, Josh Beckett. Yeah. Okay. So, I guess I, I did some sort of barter with somebody in Chicago. I appeared at a club and in exchange they gave me three fourth row tickets to the Marlins series in, in, in, in Florida. And I actually went with my dad. I took my dad and my brother. Very cool. So there's this moment that will forever stick out in my mind. This is Sosa, like roided out of his brains or, you know, he's like, he's, he's jacked. And I once saw Sosa, like with only a t-shirt on. I mean, he was jacked. Yeah. He was jacked like a pro wrestler. Yeah. You never saw it with the loose jersey that he wore. I saw what he was really like. He was jacked. Okay. So there's jacked Sammy roided Sosa versus Josh Beckett. This is the series that ultimately the Cubs lose because of the Bartman game. Okay. But I'm in Florida. The Cubs are on a roll. They're going to the world series. There's all this momentum. 2003. Sammy Sosa come up and this is like, I think Sosa hit 62 home runs that year. Yeah. Something like that. Beckett's the ace. Sosa comes up. Beckett throws one under Sammy. and Sammy's chin, Sammy flexes like you're going to throw that shit at me. I mean, I'm right there. I'm watching it. I watch all the body language. I see Beckett go, oh, yeah? Beckett throws 98 Sosa swing and miss, 99 swing and miss, 100 miles an hour swing and miss. And Beckett's like, fuck you, Sammy. Okay, that's what I love about baseball. That's what I mean about competitive thing. It's a game, but that's the point. Like, would Josh Beckett have gone 98, 99, 100, fuck you, Sammy, if it wasn't the situation? Pop, okay, pop, just call pop, whatever, music, it's fucking competitive. It's super competitive. Start here, 1988, I'm what, 21 years old, okay? Again, I'm a nobody. I'm a nobody. I love my rock history. I'm fully aware of Elvis and the Beatles and the Everly Brothers, and I'm thinking, I don't even know how to write a song. How am I going to convince somebody, including my own father, that I have a future in this game? So what do I do? I get out, meet the Beatles, and I sit there and I listen. I go, why do they do what they do? Why does this song start with the vocal? Why does this song start with the guitar intro? And I start systemically breaking down everybody's system. I could bore you to tears breaking down the Beatles system, the Everly Brothers system. I broke it down, and then I applied it to my own gifts, and I said, okay, now I know how to do this. And slowly but surely, I started putting those pieces together. So by the time I'm standing on a floor with the band who's grumpy, who doesn't want to be there, I've already put in my 10. I've already put in my 10,000 hours of songwriting. And I guarantee you, they did not. But that's not my fucking problem. So if I have a riff, okay, what's the most famous thing ever? James Hetfield, one of the greatest riff writers of all time. I mean, unbelievable. Unbelievable guitar player. Unbelievable singer-songwriter. I mean, James Hetfield is the man in my estimation. Who writes Enter Sandman? Kirk. Kirk writes, do, do, do, do, do. And Lars picked it off like a jam. A jam tape that they had from a 4 a.m. jam session or something. Okay? My point was, James or Jimmy or Darcy, you might write Enter Sandman. Throw it in the middle of the room. They would try to accuse me that I wouldn't be willing to follow it even if they did it. I was like, are you crazy? If you write Enter Sandman, I'm going to jump on it. Are you kidding? I want to win more than I want to. I want to win. I want us to win. Because if we win, I win. Yeah. That's why I stuck with the band. At the absolute peak of the band, when the band started to fall apart, that's why I stuck with the band. Because I believed in the band more than I believed in myself, much to my own personal detriment. What do you mean, to your personal detriment? When Jimmy Chamberlain left the Pumpkins in 1996, okay? And I've said this in public before, so this is not some new revelation. That's the moment I should have jumped out of the band. The Melancholy was one of the biggest records in the world. It went on to be a diamond record. It had five or six singles. I was Boy Wonder. I produced this record that even the record company didn't want, and it went on to make them a gazillion dollars. And I got a band that's falling apart. Well, anybody with half a brand goes, see ya. It's going to all be about me now. I'm going to make all the money. I'm going to get all the chicks. It's all going to be about me. No, I stayed there because I believed in the band. Do you think in an. By the way, I'm still in the band. Yeah. But there's. Does that translate? Is that the way I mean it? Yes. Okay, good. When you mention. And I don't know how Splits worked for Metallica. And, you know, in this era, the guy who's in the room, who's like. Oh, I love that shit. Who's the vibe is like, I want 15% because I was there. And here you're writing 100% songs and producing them. But there's a lot of contribution that your band did. You know, being in a band sucks. And there are two ways that a band doesn't work. And it's also the two ways that they do work. One is it's a dictatorship. And the other one is that it's a democracy. But both don't work. It was an autocracy. There you go. Was that your question? Sorry. You and I are going to be friends. But no, I mean, this is. Yes. Poorly. Poorly? How would you deal with it now? Well, here's the. And if I'm not getting what you're after, please course correct me. I don't know what I'm getting after. No, I feel like. I'm just throwing out Kirk Hammett riffs in the room and letting you pick it up. Let me start here with a fun story because you live in this town and you know this vibe. So for a while, I dated a pop star, Jessica Oreglasso, who's in the band that I'm in. The Veronica's with her twin sister, Lisa. Still very successful. When we were dating, sometimes I would tag along to these writing sessions they would go on. And they wrote with Max Martin. And I mean, they wrote with some top people, but it would be some LA people here. And there would be the guy in the room as they're working on this. By the way, I've written hit songs and I got my mouth shut because it's not my session. I'm not trying to jump in on their game unless they ask me. There's a guy in the corner going, you know, like they're working on a rhyme like, you know, The Spoon and the Moon rhymes with heat. And he'd be like, June. And they're like, who the fuck is this guy? And then they'd be playing the tracks and he'd be like, yo, check it. And like, like, like freestyling over the song. And then later, you know, you go, what happened with? Oh, he wants 5% of the song because we used one word. I was like, what the fuck is this shit going on in this town? I mean, it happens in Nashville. The Nashville thing is change a word. To get a third. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that, that don't fly with me. Okay. That shit don't fly with me. That ain't going to happen. But, okay, back to your question. There's stuff I don't want to get into because it's stuff for my book someday. But let's put it this way. There are times where people didn't like the way it was going down, which is that I was 100% writer. They would sort of, sort of imply certain things. So what that did is I stopped bringing ideas to the floor and I would work on everything at home. Okay. So for anybody who doubts me in this, okay, number one, and I don't mean this as a diss. These are just facts. Of all the Smashing Pumpkins hit songs, I'm the only writer. There's no co-writes. Okay. So nobody else in that group ever wrote not only any hit songs for the Pumpkins, any hit songs for anybody else. So that's what I'm saying is people can get grumpy about that. But at the end of the day, if you don't show game outside of that situation, I think that sort of proves that my instincts about it was about me was correct. Simple. Period. So now I just straight up about it because it is what it is. I mean, I'm not going to feel bad because I'm the guy writing the songs. And remember, I'm 40,000 hours into songwriting at this point. I mean, I agree with you 100% as far as like I'm. Put it this way. We ain't. We ain't running a charity up in here. This is a bare. Totally. This is a bare-knuckle business, highly competitive. And despite everything that goes on in the world, the world of songwriting is still a capitalistic business. You got it. Don't care where you come from. We're going to run with it because it's going to make people some money. The publishing, the whole business is still predicated on who writes them songs. That's it. That's it. Now, you want to be one of those stars with like 27 writers? Do what you got to do. Like people are asking me about Suno and all this stuff. I got a Suno in my brain. I don't need Suno to write my songs. But it's not just Suno. And I think there's some applicable parts to AI, you know. Shout out to Splice who has an ethical AI platform where they actually license shit. But regardless of that, I think that. The parts of AI that are interesting for a songwriter is that you can take some of the songs that you wrote in 1988 that never got heard that were actually hits and you don't have the time to go reproduce them. You can run them through to hear if it fucking sucks or not. So there's some avenues in it that it's not a matter of whether you can or not. And I'm not talking about what you end up releasing in the world. I'm just saying as a tool, it can be very valuable just in hearing whether or not it has value. Let me say. You didn't ask me, but I'm going to make a declaratory statement. I refuse, refuse, patently refuse to use AI in my music creation. Great. Because to me, it's a deal with the devil. Simple. If you want me to elaborate on that, Will, if you want to move on, please. Yeah, elaborate on it. Why not? We're on a podcast. You know, whether it's the Promethean fire myth or whatever, to me, you're literally leaning into the thing that will destroy you. Period. So that's why I'm not going to mess with it. Because the pressure, the inspiration, the soul searching, the I'm not sure I got anything else to say. That's all part of the journey that a songwriter needs to go to. Okay. Now, if it was the guy in my band or somebody I met through my friend Shooter Jennings or whatever, and we're writing songs together, that's a real person with real feelings and real feelings. blood core through their veins. And maybe someday we're going to argue about a publishing split, okay? But if we're arguing, it means there's something of value that we're arguing over. If my new buddy, my new running buddy is, pick your app or app to still be made, okay? That shit's never going to end. I'm saying it's good that a songwriter has a doubt. It's good that a songwriter is not sure they have anything left to say. It's good that a songwriter has to think of a new chord that they haven't thought of. That's where the magic comes from. And until that is proven otherwise, I'm sticking with the game I'm in. We even started this by saying that the next step is going to be analog, where people want, they're coming to you. Okay, we're having the same thought at the same moment. Maybe, maybe people will listen to me and continue to listen to me into my old age because they know it's coming from me. That actually might be part of the sale. You understand? 100% that's part of the sale. And that's what I'm saying. As a tool, it can be really valuable if you want to use it. And if you don't want to use it, don't use it. But going back to that- No, no, but I'm not trying to cut you off, but I'm saying I'm making a bigger argument. Do you understand? You're flirting. Okay, we, us, we're flirting with the thing that will destroy us as a economy, as a business, as a movement. We're asking to be eradicated. We're giving them our information. We're letting them, they already have it. We have all our other information. God knows what the labels are doing. Am I going to get a check someday for 62 cents? Because you know what I mean? Like, is that coming? Yeah, it is. Okay. Right. But I'm saying is on a spiritual level to lean into it is to ask to have be wiped out. You're asking to be wiped out. Do you think, and this is just playing devil's advocate, speaking of Prometheus, but if you're looking at 1927, going back to the you know, uh, slack records, even before that tin pan alley, the publishing industry had an opportunity to invest in the record business and their original pressings and could have owned the record business for probably for nothing, for nothing. But there's a, not we're going to stick with pianos. That's what we do. Then radio comes in and they say, well, we can, you can invest in this thing. That's magic. Nobody's going to invest in this thing. That's magic. Nobody's going to listen to that. And everyone would have to buy one and put it in their house. I'm sticking with pianos. Pianos sued songwriters. Songwriters are stuck in this, this like forever cycle. Go back and go even further to, to Napster and all this. Fuck that. We're going to stick with that. What we know we're going to stick with CDs. CDs are the answer. And we're going to like, we'll sue the individual users and all that. Are you, are you making, are you making a point about whether or not I'm a Luddite or, or, or, or maybe I'm just wondering, is it, is it, is it inappropriate for, is it inappropriate for song, for, for the music industry to invest and be partners with the AI platforms rather than completely shut it out? I'm a, I'm, I'm a pragmatic person. It's going to happen. It doesn't matter what I think. Fair. Right. So what really matters is, is are the songwriters, the organic songwriters, the a hundred percenters or, or people who are able to collaborate, are they going to be able to innovate to keep pace with the demon on the other side of the room? That's going to be the real story. Because if I was 15 years old today, would I have my little task game four track be trying to figure out what minor chord Robert Smith is playing versus, hey, I can just feed it in this machine. It's going to tell me what to play. And by the way, when I do that, my father, who doesn't think I have a musical future is now going to believe that I have a musical future because this, this machine told me what four chords to play. Oh, totally. I think, I think the real, uh, uh, fallow winter that's coming is you're going to lose generations of songwriters. And what you're really going to end up is with like, okay, so over the last 20 years, we've seen the, the, the rise of the producer, the star producer, where the, the producer is almost more important, particularly like Max Martin, the producer writer is more important than the artist. At least how the business animates itself. Right. I mean, you generally agree with that, right? Okay. So now you're going to see the rise of the guy who knows how to run the programs better than the other guy or girl. Yeah. I think that's, it'd be like Dr. Joe, Dr. Joe is the king of something, something, something, and he'll be branded and he'll have a sponsorship and he'll be doing commercials. And you can be just like me. Look, I got, I got, I got a Benz in the driveway and I'm dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, because I'm just really good at like knowing how to put this information together. I don't even know fucking music. I just know what I like. Well, some of that's the, the, you're born with taste. It's somebody's, well, without getting, we could go on the AI. Listen, there's historical antecedents and you were right to point it out that every generation kind of does. It's, Oh my God. Okay. But let's face it, this shit's going to wipe out a lot of people. It's going to wipe out a lot of people. It already has. I mean, like there's no reason any demo singers done. This might be the most cataclysmic technological tech, technological innovation in this town since the change from silence to talking pictures. A lot of people are going to lose their gig. And a lot of you're suddenly just gonna be a lot of new faces who are suddenly like boy or girl wonder because they know how to press some buttons. You brought up the right moment that when talkies began and you went from silent movies to sound, one third of all instrumentalists in the United States lost their job because every single major city had a movie theater that had an orchestra that would play throughout the, the, the show, the movie. And what people don't recognize that by adding sound to that, a third of all instrumentalists in the United States lost their job pretty much overnight within about five years. Similarly, all the actors who were immigrants, which most of the people were, who were in, in silent movies couldn't transfer because once they had to speak, it totally changed the facade. This whole town held their breath when Garbo finally spoke on camera because they didn't know whether her allure was going to translate to a new audience. And she went on to become a bigger movie star because they love the accent. In other words, this is, this is where we're at. There's no question that there are a lot of instrumentalists right now that will lose their jobs and producers. And to be honest, a lot of those people who are that 5% that were in the room that said, well, why not rhyme with June? That person is going to get hard. Yo, check it. Yo, yo, check it. June. One third. Um, let's go back. Uh, so how do you meet Butch Vig? Um, good question. Uh, he was in, uh, you know, this is before, before garbage and after urge overkill. How do you meet Butch? Uh, quick version of the story was we were trying desperately to get signed. And at that moment, sub pop was the indie label that was hot. Um, somehow we contacted them and they said, if you drive to Seattle, we'll give you three gigs opening for Tad and the Afghan wigs, uh, Seattle, Portland, and Chico, California. So we got in a van with ball tires, drove 40 hours West, crashed on a nice lady's floor who let us crash because we had no money played for sub pop. They thought so little of us. They said, we'll give, maybe they felt bad for us. They gave us a seven inch single. Like they had a single of the month club. They didn't offer us a record deal. There's another story where later they did, but we'll skip that for today. Um, but they, uh, they offered us the seven inch single and, and whatever the budget was three grand or whatever to make the single. So we went back to Chicago. We'd released one single with a local guy. His name was Mike potential. He said, uh, there's this producer up in Madison, Wisconsin named Butch Vig. Never heard of him. Uh, and so I went to the record store and I tried to find any record that Butch Vig had been involved with. He was involved with some pop bands that had been, uh, Firetown and, uh, Spooner, but it was more like Jangly Midwestern pop. Wasn't certainly wasn't the pumpkin sound in 1990. And, um, I found a record he'd done by a band called Das Damen, who was kind of a very early kind of heavy guitar band, cool, cool band. And I, I remember listening to the production. I didn't like the guitar sound, but I thought that it's good. It got a good kick drum sound. So we hired Butch because he had a good kick drum sound because almost every indie record had a shitty kick drum sound. And because drums were so essential to our, our band, that's how we met. So the first day we met Butch was outside of smart studios loading in the equipment. Um, and we did, uh, Tristessa and La Valle Vida, our first, uh, kind of real single, uh, for sub pop, uh, with Butch and I producing the record. And I think a day and a day went. And, and I remember at that session, him saying that he just recently, uh, done some demos with Nirvana. So, so this is, this is all this nascent period where we're unknown, he's unknown. He'd done some music with Nirvana because Kurt liked what he'd done or something, something, something. And that's where this whole craziness starts. Where did you learn to produce? When you, why is it produced by you and Butch? Um, well, that's a good, uh, - That's a great question. 89, we had this rule in the band where we didn't spend any of the money that we made at gigs. So we set it all aside and kind of like a kiddie fund for a rainy day. And eventually we got to the point where nobody would sign us. So I decided to make our own record, our own album. And a guy had a basement studio near where I worked at a record store and I would go in there for, I don't know, $10, $20 an hour. And the band got very bored very quickly and just banged off. So I produced 19 songs, a bunch of acoustic stuff, electric, kind of like the early version of where the band was going to go. And those songs ended up being the songs that ended up getting assigned down the road. But the real story, and to the heart of your question, was the man's name is Mark Anofo, great guy. But one day I'm sitting at the board and something's playing and I go to touch the board because I want to turn my guitar up. And he goes, no, no, no, you don't touch the board. I'm the producer. You don't touch the board. And I thought, well, fuck you. And that's when I was like, I'm going to produce my own records. Because I can't, how can I write this song, organize this motley crew who half the time can barely play, and then spend money to record and then not have it sound the way I need it to sound? That was just, to me, as a songwriter, I just could not wrap my head around that. Or I got to beg some guy to turn my guitar up. I was like, that's not going to happen. It seems like the best way to manipulate you is to tell you you can't do something. Pretty true, yeah. Pretty true. You know, Gish comes out right before Smells Like Teen Spirit. It sort of is this thing where I think you look at Gish differently. It's like, oh yeah, this is, it opened the door where all this music that was sitting there, even their earlier stuff, Bleach and whatever, everything just starts to sound different when you're like, oh no, this is commercial music. But when you released Gish, what were your expectations at that point? We just wanted to get to the next record. I mean, we were assigned to Virgin, but they put us on Carolina's subsidiary. I think the budget was 20 grand. So for a full record, I mean, not 1990 money, but still, it wasn't a ton of time. And Butch was very reasonable about charging us. I think we got Butch and the studio. I think we got Butch and the studio for $500 a day. I think that was the deal. So crazy. And I think we made the whole record in 46 days, went over budget. And we put it out, and right away it started selling. It went on to sell 450,000 copies on an independent, and at the time was the biggest selling independent album of all time. So crazy. So we obviously were catching a wave. I'd like to take all the credit. But something about what we had figured out in Chicago was linking up with what people were figuring out in other places, something about the guitar. And why, why you guys are such an outlier. Everyone's talking about the scenes out of Seattle, the scenes out of Seattle. And then here Gish comes out before, you know, Smells Like Teens. What is it that, why is it that no one else could figure out that this, like, what, what was, what was in your head that you think gave you this prophecy? Well, I mean, I used to go see a lot of shows. But I think the way I would take the question slightly differently. I didn't think, what I was hearing in the clubs was being properly represented on the record. So for example, if people want to go check out Gish, our first album, super dry drums, super dry vocals, no reverb or anything on the, on the guitars. So the guitars are like jacked, loud, clear, articulated. I've got an insane drummer who plays his brains out. And between the two of us, we crafted this hyper aggressive, but sensual thing, that was, could compete with the rock thing, but it didn't feel like Sunset Strip rock. Yeah. And somehow that record seemed to be the first record to capture the zeitgeist, the sound, the sound of what was happening. Let's call it the soundtrack sound of what was happening. The feeling in the club was on the record. And we went for that. The takes are all live. There's no editing. I mean, it is jacked. It feels like that. Yeah. And, you know, as I, as I famously said, Butch leaves that record to go do Nevermind. And so I've said this story before, the simple version is we're sitting 4th of July with Butch. He's just come back from LA. He's just finished the record. Butch had initially mixed the record. And then the record company rejected Butch's mix and used Andy Wallace. And Kurt picked Andy Wallace because he'd mixed Slayer. I mean, that's the true story. So we heard the first mixes outside of the studio, sitting at a lake with Butch on 4th of July. We just happened to be in Madison with Butch. And he presses the cassette. And the first thing I hear is the opening sound of Teen Spirit. And the first thought I had was, oh, interesting. He's ripped off more than a feeling by Boston. And then the second thought I had was, oh, my God, you stole my guitar sound. Because I had taught Butch my very specific way of how I wanted the guitars to sound and be represented. Did you find yourself competitive with Kurt? Oh, yeah. Because he was the best. He was the best. I always go back to this quote. I remember when Charles Barkley was playing, and Michael Jordan was the player. And they said to him in an interview, do you think Michael Jordan is better than you? And he goes, if I thought Michael Jordan was better than me, I wouldn't play. I play because I think I'm as good or better than. So Kurt was like this North Star. You were like, oh, my God, the talent that guy had was staggering. I mean, it was staggering to watch up close. He just had this gift that was like, I don't know how he did it. He made it look easy. I know he worked. I'm not saying he didn't work, but I'm saying he made it look easy. So it was even more intimidating. And oh, by the way, everybody wanted to be Kurt. Notice how all of a sudden everybody started dressing like Kurt, playing like Kurt, interviewing like Kurt. I don't want to be like Kurt. I want to be like me. So the room's all running in a different direction from what I'm putting out. I'm wearing Paisley shirts. Yeah. So now I really got to figure out not only how to best this guy, I got to do it my own way because I'm not going to imitate him. There's no fucking way I'm going to do that. If I'm going to win, I'm going to win my own way. So it pushed me way farther than I would have gone. So God bless him. I mean, back to the competitive. I love it. It's great. How awesome is it? How awesome is that I was squared up? Go back to sports. We're on the basketball court. He's smaller than me. He's got a fairer voice than me. Guy writes hooks for days. The guy wrote hooks like he was eating breakfast. I mean, and you're staring across the room and you go, I got to dunk on this motherfucker. It's like, let's go, man. Let's go. That's how I felt. I didn't personalize it. I didn't idolize him and I didn't hate him. I sort of revered. I understood how important he was. I got it. I understood because I knew my 60s. I was like, okay, he's this guy. But, you know, just because there was Jimi Hendrix doesn't mean there wasn't Eric Clapp and that's the whole point. When you lose that, you lose something that you can't estimate what that's about. People get lost in the sauce on that. If you think about it, it's respect. I respect your game. Like, fuck, man. God damn. How do you do that? By the way, we're working with the same guy. So I'm hearing all the stories. It's not like he's behind a mysterious cloud. And oh, by the way, he's married to my ex-girlfriend who still calls me and we talk. So I know everything that's going on. I know his management. I mean, I know the mythology and I know the human behind the scenes. And we would even talk on the phone sometimes. I mean, it's like, again, it goes to the basketball thing. It's like, when we're on the court, I want to beat you because you're the best. Otherwise, what am I doing here? This era is really interesting because I was trying to, I shared the single soundtrack recently, where, you know, Drown is on there. And I don't remember what singles were from it because they were all singles. There's a story there. There's a story. I want to hear it. And what's interesting is like, it's the NBA All-Star of 1992 is the Olympics dream team. And for me, my Olympics dream team is the single soundtrack. Right. You know, and here's the, here are these like incredible songs. But again, this is the Seattle grunge scene and Smashing Pumpkins. Okay. The backstory is, it was Chris Cornell's doing that got us on the soundtrack. He's the one who recommended us for Cameron Crowe to put us on the soundtrack. It was actually Chris who called and said, would you be open to this? I think he called with Cameron. He said, do you have any songs? Because Gish was out. And I'd already written Drown for what was supposed to be Siamese Dream. So I was like, but it was really the only good song I had laying around. It's like, okay. And Chris got us some money for that. Forever grateful for that. And then when the soundtrack came out, got to remember in 1991-ish, two-ish, there were only about seven to 13 alternative radio stations in America. So getting played on those stations wasn't like, it didn't mean anything in the sense that suddenly you're going to have, there was K-Rock, but I mean, it wasn't like you're going to sell a million records. It was none of that. You needed this magical thing of MTV and stuff. Well, I can't remember what labeled the record. I think it was Alice in Chains had wood. and radio started playing drown our song and alice in chains would both great songs and both were getting traction and i think it was maybe columbia columbia killed our single because we weren't on their label so drown got killed as a single by the by the by the record label putting out the record they actually called the radio station since it's not playing it it's crazy there's there's your politics don't you love the music business you know that that album sells two million copies and is is um or more and it's it's so good if anybody if you don't know what it's like to live in the 90s and grow up listen to the single soundtrack and that's it so many of those front men have died that are maybe am i dead and i'm in your in your particular digital heaven this is how i'm telling you so surprise surprise well it's been a good run it was a good run you've been dead for a long time man um no so like what but but all these like i died after gish and this is just all right none of none of that happened you wrote it for siamese dream that never came out um this is this thing just took a real wild turn it's been two hours so there you go um when you know the 27 club that was before the grunge era was already established it it was it's alive and running now but being part of a scene where some of these people didn't didn't get to age well or some of them aged and didn't want to be older whatever the reason is did you ever fear for your own health oh yeah yeah for me the the most haunting time was pre-siamese precisely because of what we're talking about gish comes out huge success we do the chili pepper pearl jam tour huge tour i mean rolling stone i think one time came out and said it was one of the 10 best tours of all time we only got one paragraph that everyone else got more paragraphs so you see how these things work um anyway then nevermind comes out and blows i mean it blows up i mean it is game game on now and then pearl jam blows up and then allison shane started like it is on mtv it is on okay well now we're on a major label which was virgin major label budget 250 grand we end up spending 350 they weren't happy about that and we went down to marietta georgia and made siamese but in the eight months lead up to that i'm on tour i'm on drugs i'm insecure i'm i don't know how to write pop songs i just spent the last five years of my life learning how to write psychedelic super jams shiva and and cool seven minute songs like drown i mean that's where my brain was and now i got to figure out how to write a three minute pop song to be on what k rock what what's k rock who's kevin wedley you know what i mean it was like huh what so back come out the beatles records and i go okay now i gotta figure this out and then i was like i can't do this i just can't i i was like that's that for me was the moment of like staring down the camera lens i was like i'm not sure i can do this i'm not sure i'm not sure i have the and by the way my voice has always been a part of you know the my story love it hate it you know nails on a chalkboard it's like you know again i was just talking about something like kurt kurt great voice eddie great voice i mean these guys had great voices i have a unique voice some people love it some people don't but i'm saying it it's not i'm i don't lack self-awareness obviously you know i mean like being on the radio is different than making a record that people want to listen to i grew up listening to the bands that didn't give a shit about being on the radio per se the cure joy division suzy and the banshees gene loves jezebel there's a lot of cool bands that sang cool i totally fit within that ethos now it's something different and oh by the way here come all the second wave generation bands the nirvana clones and the pearl jam clones i mean it was suddenly it was like the zone flooded with a lot of and by the way think about this just because we're talking songwriters okay kurt maps out a blueprint hey basically amplify kurt said he's writing pixie songs he said it so no mystery if you take the pixies formula charles did amplify it this way this way this way this way anti-solo in the middle blah blah blah blah there's your formula everybody floods the zone and there's me in the corner going well i can't write those because if i do i'm dead there goes there goes the brand there goes the dream there goes the doesn't matter that it's my guitar sound you know what i mean like no one's gonna give a shit so i had to figure out something that was totally different that's when i started writing songs like today and disarm and cherub rock and i went all the way in like heavy in on on the whole deal i mean it's so um it's strange to hear from your perspective how you hear your voice i remember uh you know i'm like a theater kid and jazz kid and what i was raised to think a good singer was was uh the kind of you know what you'd assume a good singer is someone maybe with vibrato and and and when uh i was it was perfect time i was 10 11 years old these albums are coming out and i remember just being obsessed with them and just listening to my my mom and my sister were like uh they're like this isn't real singing i remember barbara streisand had something on like hbo and they're like they made me watch it being like i don't know what to do with it i don't know this is real singing and i'm like but i really like this other kind of singing yeah and one of the things that that you do really well you could sing in many ways but you choose to you know chew vowels a certain way you choose to double your vocals in a certain way yeah you don't have to do it that way that's the producer you see but you do it and that's what makes your voice great oh thank you is that it is totally unique okay but but let me stop you so the artist in me is completely insecure and the producer's like you're gonna do it this way not butch vig the producer me the producer yeah you over here imperfect person you're gonna do it this way this is the only way it's gonna work so i'll give you a flash marietta georgia uh uh disarm which went on to be a big mtv song acoustic strings vocals that's it okay i go in i cut the vocal do like eight takes come in i comp the vocal not butch i comp the vocal because i'm so paranoid i comp the vocal we listen back to it which goes that's pretty good i go not good enough and i went back and sang it again that was me doing that insanity i mean it's like you know when you were scared oh yeah so on one hand i'm beating up the singer in me like i i did an album out here once uh adore uh 97 98 i got to the point where i was so embarrassed with my my lack of technical capability because at that point i started writing more sophisticated melodic things and i would kick everybody out of the studio i'd run the tape machine myself and just sit at the board and sing like like some weirdo you know like uh in his lonely spaceship singing songs and when i couldn't hit the the runs that i'd written the writer in me is now mad at the singer in me because i can't sing what i've written i would punch myself in the thigh and i would go home and there would be bruises all up and down my like like deep bruises because i was so frustrated with the my lack of technical capability and then i was mad at my parents for refusing to give me a musical education i mean i went through all of it so that's did you ever get therapy oh yeah 13 13 years that didn't work but i'm still here you were saying how going into time is you know dream is like is was you know the lowest part but after the success of today disarm you know it's just massive did you recreate the same sort of fear or at that point were you like no i'm i'm now like no i didn't i'm now in the i'm now on the list i played i played it in public a certain way but in in private i was like the thing well the thing no the thing that irritated me the most was we we had this breakthrough record it's considered a classic now so i'm not speaking out of turn and and and we just didn't get our flowers to use the young kids phrase it just didn't click we weren't getting the great reviews we were getting i mean rolling stone three stars they called it derivative i mean listen to siamese dream now call it a derivative of what i mean yeah i i i tried to make my guitar sound like boston but the record doesn't sound like boston yeah you know what i mean it's like derivative of what there's no record before or since that sounds like siamese dream i mean is a one i think there are a lot of people who tried to copy sure but even but yeah even i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't only made one of those right okay it is a one it is a one it's a once in a lifetime type of record okay and then it didn't it wasn't magical it didn't it didn't turn into the magical thing that i saw happen for the other bands of our generation so then i got mad and i thought okay now i'm going to do a double album and i'm going to scorch earth all the way around us and nobody will follow us and that turned out to be true and then and in that i am boasting because then then i went to ground because i knew what i had i knew what i was capable of i had enough confidence in to go to ground and i we went there and now i'm literally performing the damn thing as an opera so so whatever that was it was it was important for me to do there but the irritation was being called a grunge band it's like to call the pumpkin's a grunge band is like it's it's like a slur it's like a grunge band it was an orchestration i mean you listen i i had so much fun the last couple days just you know the insanity going going through again because it's a different thing you know you listen to songs from before you're a professional musician songwriter like you it's still it's so magical to me it's magical i know how songs are written i've written some big songs i love my job i love the business i love studying it all that stuff similarly but to to listen through your discography the last couple days and by the way i don't always do that okay well thank you i did it because it's like it's a to me it's a warm hug okay it's all the the all the teen i'm just there man you like bring me to the years where i'm starting to play guitar when i'm in 1993 94 yeah you know i played a bunch of instruments before and you're like you know i didn't i would wouldn't dare to be like i never felt competitive with anybody who was on the radio at the time except for i was like i think i can maybe write like it's probably about 97 where i was like i can write some of these songs i'm like that's the whole come out to la and that's the beauty of alternative culture it's supposed to be inviting it's not supposed to be you can't get here you know you know i'm surrounded by my 20 assistants it's supposed to be we're you and you're us that's that's why when the troops rally around alternative music it's so powerful because it is true identity politic yeah it's between the tribe right the other thing is like it's it's that's why that that's why the ai thing's going to turn into a total shit show because it's going to become more about that we're going to do a little bit of rapid fire all right i'm just going to list some some songs and some albums what if i just give the answers first and then we ask the questions to see if they look i kind of like that yes no maybe three uh okay go three a tom is that how do you is that how you pronounce it i always thought adam awesome so i'm such an idiot um okay so let's go with um uh the video for today what do you want to know i don't know i'm just gonna just uh oh just whatever the video for today um i had the idea about doing it as an ice cream truck they foisted on us that we had to use this arty director and he he made us do this other art concept which is why there's people making out in the field and has nothing to do with the ice cream truck guy so great uh let's talk about um the uh opening riff of trust me trust me the uh uh courtney love what is that what was that a celebrity scan oh yeah i was like huh tell me about tell me about the opening riff for uh celebrity skin courtney said she wanted to do a glam song and i said like this we were talking about t-rex and that's just literally i literally went and she goes take me over or we both did it in a moment literally boom we wrote the song in like 20 30 minutes lyrics everything boom go because she said i wanted this kind of glam thing she'd been listening to t-rex or something but i said i want to do a glam song and she said i want to do but i knew i couldn't do like 12 bar blue t-rex so i had to give her something that made her feel like what she wanted and i went it just came out of me and boom we went right in were you guys dating at the time no no no we uh we had uh romantic relationships at different periods 90 early 90s and then and then 94 somewhere on there i know you have your your podcast where you have your episode with her that just came out today yes yes is it fun to reminisce with friends that's we have so much history that's a that's a that's a maze that's a maze tell me about your podcast uh magnificent others uh my attempt is to reframe how people are viewed in the culture um and so i i interview people that maybe might seem unusual uh to be interviewed at depth and then after people watch the interviews they tend to say okay now i really understand what you were after so it might be somebody like uh recently i interviewed uh uh uh aaron murphy who was tabathon bewitched who was on the show from age i think 11 months to she was about eight eight years old somewhere around there and her life has been defined by the fact that when she was a kid she was on this famous tv show so in in typical celebrity culture your value is what you were on that tv show you have no other value to the world so to me it's just as valuable for her to talk about her life as an adult like what she's done with herself what she's what she's made of her life she's she's a total positive person who's gone on to hell with her life and she's helped others she's not just somebody sitting there reminiscing about what happened once upon a time this is i don't like the way american culture frames up celebrity that's the general sort of spiritual basis of the show but it's much wider than that are there other cultures that do it better in the world yeah i would argue that european culture at least celebrates artists getting older yeah which is why leonard cohen was headlining arenas in his 70s the chance of that happening here without somebody playing their heavy big big hit back catalog is virtually nil but leonard cohen never had hits so how was he headlining arenas in his 70s because he's a one-of-a-kind artist who's on parallel with dylan as far as a folk troubadour i mean that's even dylan basically recognizes that but in american culture it's like leonard cohen what hit did he have you know oh sisters of mercy covered one of his songs i mean that's that's the problem with american culture it's it's not only what have you done for me lately it's like what have you done for me in five minutes it's like that's where we what's beautiful about american culture is it's is it's uh rapacious uh consumerism so when we get it right we really get it right but mostly we get it wrong 1979 was a good year that's so great it was like this frank's night it was a very good year let's go zombie uh young blood called me and said i had got this crazy idea it's basically a pumpkin song i didn't produce it like a pumpkin song because i didn't want to get accused of you getting ripping you off so i want to scratch the itch that's his quote uh and and let you do with it what what i should have had you do with it in the first place and i said are you sure because you know i'm going to do that big wall of guitar and all that stuff and so i got 90 there are you good dad um i think the jury's out on that i like to think i'm a good dad but i don't think you can really know until your kids grow up i think the natural thing of a parent is to rationalize their behavior and their decisions but you don't really know if you're giving your kids what they they they really truly need and i think that's the haunting part about being a parent you can only guess and my i have three kids and they're completely different i mean they are completely different so like songwriting it's like you know you would write different with different writers right it's like with kids it's like wow this is this is psychedelic what these kids need you know what would you tell your mom right now well i could tell you what i told her before she passed which is it's it's it's okay you know my mom went into a mental institution when i was four never lived with her again but she got to see my success and so that was kind of what i said it's like it turned out okay it wasn't perfect but it's okay it's weird because if you're looking at your kids and saying that you'll see we'll see how they turn out you seem to turn out really well but you know it seems like you had a complicated relationship with both your parents did your parents raise you well no poorly and then how did you turn out so great i'm a willful motherfucker what would your uh what would you say to your dad right now i don't know i'm still working on my dad passed about three and a half years ago i'm still working on that i love my father i mean he i would not have played music if it wasn't for my father i think that was the thing that struck me after he died was like i'm not sure i would have been a musician i think i took up music to get his attention i just happen to be good at it but i don't i didn't take up music because i had this love to be a musician i love music but i didn't necessarily want to be on stage i don't know so it's complicated i need to hit that thing are you happy happier happier i i'm i'm on a i'm on a what do you call it a quest i'm on a quest i got i got asked an interview recently uh it was a deep dive interview because when i launched my podcast um it was sort of a review of my life more as a public person and just as a musician and the woman asked a fantastic question which was something along the lines of like what are you still after what do you like what what drives you at this point and i said what drives me at this point is my true place in the culture has not yet been established i know what i've done i could sit here and tell you off camera exactly where i land how i'll be remembered after i'm gone but if i sat on camera i do get a ton of fucking hate because i'm not viewed in the culture commensurate to my to my contribution and that's generational politics more than anything and also clickbait culture i'm good for i'm good for clicks i mean let's face it but at the end of the day that's not why i'm here i was telling uh some of my friends who worked on maybe the the biggest musical of the last 30 years and and is that hamilton yeah and and And, and similar thing was, uh, you know, I know what my obituary is going to say. And so like, you know, moving on to the next project and doing other stuff, but it's like, it's, it's a hard thing to, you can't erase melancholy and Siamese dream and not that you're trying to, but what it does is it, it's like, it's this understanding that's like, there are, like you were saying, there, there are no albums after that compete, but you can't compete. Those are at the top, you know, then there, there are others, they're different. But like, you know, here's a guy who studied, uh, uh, you know, Sergeant Peppers and, and then you have melancholy. Like, I don't know that in a long list, like where the, which one's ahead of which it's like, those things are, are what artists need in, in, in order to, to create what's may end up being your biggest contribution, which is shining a light on other, on, on others. Maybe it's the, all the other stuff that, you know, But can I take, can I take your point in a slightly different direction? It's my current sort of obsessive rant, which is we are starting to see the waning of the baby boom, boomer shadow. We as artists have only lived in baby boomer culture. Gen X never surpassed and that's the subsequent cultures, whatever, Gen Y, whatever they have not surpassed. Boomers are still the predominant influence in American culture still. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Would you agree with that? Okay. You are now seeing for the first time in our lives, the waning of that culture. So everything you just said is boomer value. Interesting. So let me, let me give you a quick, uh, sketch using me as the example, since she brought me up. Please. Uh, in boomer culture, my value is my most successful albums in reverse order and whether or not I achieved anything else outside of that. Like, you know, hosted the, you know, album. Yeah. You know, uh, you know, said start your engines at the 2001 Indy 500, right? It's like, yeah. Slep shit. Sure. Okay. That's boomer. Okay. I can tell you right now without giving any way, any secret, my real value has nothing to do with that. That's it. And time will prove me right on that. I'm not saying that is not part of my story. I'm saying it's only a piece of a much greater value. I'm. I, I agree obviously with, with what you're saying, I think my, I don't, I don't really believe in legacy anyway. I'm going to be dead. No one's going to remember. Okay. I liked it. I liked the word used in the, in the intro, which is influence. Right? Yeah. Okay. So let's use Lou Reed and one of my favorite writers and somebody I knew a little bit personally. Okay. What's more important, the songs Lou Reed wrote or no, let's use the boomer value. The hits Lou Reed wrote or Lou Reed's influence. What's more important? Yeah. Undoubtedly. The influence. It's not even close. I mean, it's ridiculous. So Lou Reed as an artist needs to be reassessed for his real value, not his boomer value. Oh, I, I agree. I mean, in your story, not mine, but there's no question that the advocacy that I've done for songwriters will is far more influential than anything I'm known for. So. I mean, I think that's what I've done for, for as far as like my value to the business. Okay. So why can't your story be all of the above? It is, it is all of the above. No, no, no. What I'm saying is you work in this town and you go into a meeting, right? And your value is assessed eight times out of 10 on your boomer value. You know, it's like a Tekken, you know, you got, you know, fast six out of 10, you know, you know, attack, whatever, you know what I mean? It's like a video game. You get your character value, Dungeons and Dragons, right? Yeah. Very persuasive. We should have, we should each have like a little ticker here. Yes. Like where. So we've only, whether we, I'm not trying to put this on you. I'm saying it. If I'm wrong, tell me I'm wrong. We have grown up accepting the values that we were given by our parents and their parents that said, this is the way it works in the world. And particularly in Chicago working class. Yeah. You work and then maybe you get a 10 years sitting by the Wisconsin lake and then you fucking die. Yeah. And if you're lucky, your kids love you and you don't end up in a nursing home. That's the world that we grew up in. Yeah. We are part of changing the value system to an actually accurate value. And the beauty of social media as haunting as it can be, is it's going to help reassess true value. So my podcast, for example, and there's a plug, which is I actually take people and in conversation with them, demonstrate to the audience, here's the real value of this person. It's not what you think. It's not what you've been told. I love that. So for example, Aaron Murphy, right? Bewitched. Yeah. I tried to do some research on her. I went on YouTube. Every interview was about Bewitched. There wasn't any interview about her life. There wasn't any interview about her charitable contribution. There wasn't any interviews about her mindset. How do you survive being a child star and go on to have a productive, happy life? She's the mother of six kids. Yeah. Okay. So we as artists, as we push away AI this way, we need to reject boomer values this way. Which is don't tell me how valuable or non-valuable I am in your system. It's the classic top 50, the greatest 50 guitar riffs of all time. Who gives a shit? It doesn't mean anything. I'm with you, man. Yeah. And what you're seeing on streaming is like, have you ever. Is that time to go? What do I do? Maybe. Okay, last thing. What do I say? Have you ever. Has anyone ever recommended an artist to you? And you go and you look somebody up on whatever streaming service, you're like, "Holy shit, this guy's got 27 million. " I never even heard of this person. There's no publicity. That shows you that shit's changing. The gatekeepers are gone. The pitchforks and the stones, dead in the water. They have no influence anymore on what people are actually connecting to. Do they have an influence? Yes, but the gatekeeping is gone. So freaks like me are going to run wild in this new system. Because you can't stop us. Because I'm not beholden to any country. I release my own records. I have all my own publishing. 100% every song. Yeah. Haven't sold anything. Well, listen, man. Thank you for doing this podcast. Exactly. Chicago style. I appreciate. Is this how your chats normally go? They're all different. Okay. This is how I hope this one would go. Okay, good. I'm going to go with the same thing. I think that we still have to. But I got to hit this thing because. Yeah. This needs to sum up our chat. Yeah, exactly. This is how I feel about our chat. I think there will be a. Next time you're on and we talk about professional wrestling and we talk about all kinds of other shit, we've got a lot to dive into. But I think. yeah our chat yeah exactly this is how i feel about our chat Okay. that um i think you know there will be a next time you're on and we talk about professional wrestling and we talk about all kinds of other shit you know we've got a lot to to dive into but i think um you know this is a bit of a hero's journey oh thank you working and uh i am you know this is this it's so this is so fucking cool man it's just cool to have you here thank i always like i can tell you all the amazing things that smashing pumpkins did for me as a as somebody who was in a cover band in high school who would cover your songs what songs would you cover i mean you had to do well at the time it was like siamese dream was everything yeah i am so uh you know and like how crazy is that and then you know because of that kind of thing i was like i can do this too yeah and now i'm here that's to me that's the greatest the greatest compliment i get as an artist is you inspire me to pick up a guitar or piano and i and i write my own songs and i don't sound anything like you but you inspired me to do my thing that is the compliment that is a compliment that to me that's the supreme compliment so thank you then then take that compliment and uh and and i am excited for the day that people like the rock and roll hall of fame recognize recognize that it ain't gonna be anytime soon that that you belong on you belong on the the highest peaks of our business and uh and you are you are fantastic and thank you oh thank you yeah here's what we know last word uh it's all changing it's going to change it's time it changed and ultimately ultimately not anytime soon but ultimately it will benefit the the artist i agree and the maturation really is ultimately the audience's maturation and understanding that their support their peer-to-peer support of artists is is is the that's the best way to vote if you want to change what you see and what you don't like is to support the artist directly. Find at least one artist that you love and admire and give them your support. Just give them your support. Even if it's just, you know, even if you're just clicking, just give them your support. That's the key to change. That's my speech. There you go. Thank you.