Tony Mantor's : Almost Live..... Nashville - Billy Corgan's Evolution: Smashing Pumpkins journey

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Billy Corgan, frontman of Smashing Pumpkins, shares his journey from rock star to wrestling promoter while reflecting on music industry transformations. Through conversations about his current projects and upcoming tours, Corgan reveals how he's maintained creative control and relevance over a four-decade career spanning 600+ songs. • Working on Melancholy 30th anniversary recordings and preparing for special shows at Chicago's Lyric Opera • Planning multiple tours including solo shows under "Machines of God" and Smashing Pumpkins European tour • Navigating the shift from record label control to artist-driven business models • Witnessing younger audiences discover the band through streaming services and social media • Owning the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), the oldest professional wrestling organization in the world • Balancing music career with family life, including raising three children under 10 • Reflecting on how work ethic and songwriting set Smashing Pumpkins apart from their contemporaries • Sharing the crucial advice from his father: "Write your own songs"   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

in the entertainment industry has enabled me to work with a diverse range of talent. Through my years of experience, I've recognized two essential aspects. Industry professionals, whether famous stars, or behind-the-scenes staff, have fascinating stories to tell. Secondly, audiences are eager to listen to these stories, which offer a glimpse into their lives and the evolution of their life stories. This podcast aims to share these narratives, providing information. on how they evolve into their chosen career.

We will delve into their journey to stardom, discuss their struggles and successes, and hear from people who help them achieve their goals. Get ready for intriguing behind-the-scenes stories and insights into the fascinating world of entertainment. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Almost Live Nashville. Today, we're thrilled to have Billy Corrigan,

the renowned American guitarist, singer, songwriter, and professional wrestling promoter. best known as the co-founder, lead guitarist, and primary songwriter of the iconic alternative rock band, The Smashing Pumpkins. Billy is here to share updates on its recent projects and his exciting plans for the summer. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Oh, it's my pleasure. Well, let's start off a little differently.

Instead of starting from the beginning to the end, let's start out with what you're doing now. What's current? currently working on some live recordings for a melancholy 30th anniversary sort of edition that we're going to put out so I had to go back 30 years and find these recordings and then also preparing for the opera the lyric opera where they're going to do a 30th anniversary

seven shows for a melancholy album in November of Chicago and then I have a solo tour in June in the U.S. Under the band name The Machines of God and then pumpkins are touring Europe in the summer and then past that we're probably going to tour other places. as well. So it's crazy, busy year. That sounds awesome. Speaking of the UK, are you planning a tour there? This podcast has a lot of friends and followers over there.

Yeah, I've been asked to be part of the Aussie Black Sabbath last concert, so I'll be over there, and then I think we start touring somewhere in Italy not long thereafter. That sounds like a fun tour for sure. Now, you've dug into the archives, come up with 30 years of music. What was the thought process and how did you come up with that idea to do this? Well, Rock has become very much a business just as much about sentimentality as the present. Yes. The staying power of rock and roll, I think, has surprised many people, including the artists who pioneered it, say, back in the 50s and 60s.

Yeah. So we've kind of inherited this business model that have been built up over the last 20 years by the Stings and the Aussies and the, gosh, I mean, there's so many artists, Metallica and Peter Gabriel. I mean, the list goes on of artists, Elton John. The Stone's obviously being the greatest purveyors of them all. It came out that there was this new way to sustain, to call it the business of rock and roll. So we've kind of inherited this long arc of expectation. But being who we are, you know,

we have to sort of navigate it our own way. So doing box sets our own way, releasing archival projects through my T-house, baddensuzuz.com. We've released, I guess, I think about 10 or 12 archival records now. Okay. So creating new business modalities, creating new merchandising opportunities. It's crazy because as the record companies have disintegrated,

yeah, they have. Managers have become a little bit more like A&R people used to be, but in many ways, the bands have to be their own A&R people now and their own marketing people. So you end up taking on a lot more responsibility they used to, but in terms of a public-facing thing, you're more the author of who the public understands that you are and what you actually do and I guess by extension sell,

You're no longer defined by what other people say your value is. So are you re-recording all the songs? Are you just digging into the archives and re-releasing what you've already recorded? No, we own all our live recordings from the 90s that exist. So we have a voluminous archive, and so it's like wading into an ocean of tapes and things and trying to find something that would still have value to a modern listener. Yeah, that's nice. Now, when you find yourself out on tour, what kind of audience do you have?

You've got your fans, of course, has followed you. do you find that you have your fans plus their kids and their grandkids, or is it just a mixture of all of them? What's the audience look like now? Over the last, I'd say it's three to four years. We've seen the audience get a lot younger. And very quickly, I don't know where the generational shelf of it exists. We certainly see where some people are coming with their grandkids and kids and stuff like that.

But more so we're seeing where a whole young generation of fans is being made maybe through new means, whether it's TikTok, or media entities. They're finding us on streaming services because of the way things get recommended. We really do benefit from the fact that I think if a young person connects with what we do, they're surprised that there's

so much more beyond songs or something. They're like, oh my God, there's just all this music. And so they kind of enter, I guess, a pumpkin's metaverse of things to pay attention to, whether it's all the different genres the bands existed and the different time and space things that we've done, including the various iterations of the band and breaking

up and getting back together and stuff like that. So it's become a kind of interesting cottage business to run parallel to the modern version of the band, which is continuing to release music and tour. And then adding to all that, now I have a podcast with Bill Mars Network, the Magnificent Others. So again, you're sort of creating your own ecosystem of how to reach people. And also, I guess, broaden what you offer to the public. You're no longer defined by, well, you have this one lane. And as long as you're in that one lane, just kind of stay there.

Yeah, right. because back in the earlier days, the record labels had all of the control. We just had to do what they kind of told us. Now, because of the internet, TikTok, iTunes, all the platforms out there, the control has kind of come back to the artist to a certain degree, and that's not a bad thing at all. Yeah, your first reaction when you've been, in many ways, coddled in a system that's highly exploitative.

Yes. So the systems that existed, let's call it the media systems, the MTVs and the magazines in correlation, of course, with the record labels, it was all predicated on getting the maximum value out of you, and you didn't really have much control over that. And if you dared to complain, they would tell you that you were lucky to be standing there. Right.

So your first reaction, when all that disintegrated, Napster was probably the first real sign of the iceberg that was coming. You know, you suddenly go, wait, you know, what am I supposed to do? And then you're sitting in front of somebody interviewing you. saying, well, you don't sell as many records as you used to, and you look around and go, well, who is? I mean, the whole business changed. The whole business model has changed. Exactly. So your first reaction is to kind of freak out and think, like, well, what are we supposed to do?

You know, many people ran to the other side of the ship, which is being as obvious as possible just to sustain their audiences, playing old albums, you know, anything to keep people engaged in these kind of fallow years of the 2000 teens or something. And then magically, I think whether there was a lot of pioneers on YouTube and other social media creators, a new path started to be hewn kind of out of this different rock. Here's the pun where now you start to see, hey, actually, this isn't bad. This is actually a lot more of what I wished it was all along. It's more work, but again, I'm the author of my own destiny here and I'm much more in control of the outcome. And I don't live in this constant kind of existential dread and fear that if I step on the wrongs, saying there it all goes in one kind of fell swoop because some guy in an office, you know, decides, you know, with a swipe of the pen that you no longer exist. So it's been an interesting thing

because it's almost over the course of 35 years as being in like two completely different business models. It is. But with the same expectations, which is where it gets really surreal. Yeah. You are very fortunate that you're in a position where you own your masters. Many don't. Not completely, but a lot of them, just to be clear. Even so you're still very fortunate. I've had singers that have had major hit records, sold millions of records, that have come to me wanting to re-record their hits so they could gain ownership over them again. So you're in a very good position that you own most all of your masters. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to bore your audience. It's just there's so many moving pieces to all that. There sure is. You know, for example, if you get just to educate someone who might be interested, and this is why you see a lot of big.

bands go back and re-record their hits, well, if somebody wants to use your song for a commercial or a big movie. Yeah. Well, if that money, and if you're under an auspicious deal, a lot of that money goes to a label that doesn't give a shit about you. Exactly. That's so true. If you start thinking, well, how can I cut them out? And you find out, in many cases, that the bands can just go re-record the song. That's right. No fans are really going to defend the record labels in that situation because they've been so rapacious, historic. Right, right. Now, I'm curious. How did you?

you come up with the name Smashing Pumpkins? I ask a lot of bands how they come up with their names, and the answers are just so very interesting. Some people have their ideas of what they think it is, and when they find out, it's totally opposite of what they thought. It was honestly just a joke. It was never meant to be a permanent name. And then when we first started playing concerts, we thought, well, we'll just use it until we figure out something better. We just never did. I've heard that so many times. We could never think of, I'm not saying we couldn't think of something cooler or more fun or better. It's just nothing ever stuck. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard that story so many times and it's just so cool to hear it.

Now, I can't have you on this podcast without mentioning and talking about the NWA and your wrestling promotion. Are you still active with that? And how did that all come about that you got involved with wrestling? Well, no, I own the National Wrestling Alliance, which is the oldest professional wrestling body in the world. Yeah. Since 1948, this year, 77 years of continuous operation. So, no, I'm the president of that, and it's all owned by me. And we're producing, you know, 60 hours of television a year and running live events

all over the country. And it's an intense, an intense business to be in. It is. Now, how did that happen? I mean, here you are in music. And I do know that music and wrestling intertwined, especially in the late 90s, early 2000s. So how did this all come about for you? I think I was a fan as a kid,

then I lost interest and I kind of came back to my late 20s. And I started going to shows. And because I was a bit of a celab, I got access to meet some of the famous wrestlers. And I found myself sort of fascinated by the behind-the-scenes world of wrestling more so than what went on in the ring. Okay, that makes sense. And somehow, through a long series of strange events,

I just end up working in the business, end up at some point working for the second biggest company out of Nashville at the time, which was T&A. Yeah, I remember them, yeah. Owned by Dixie Carter. Yeah, I remember her. And I ended up working for Dixie for about three years, end up owning a piece of the company.

Then it fell all into lawsuits and all sorts of things. And I thought, okay, I'm done with this. And then I got the opportunity to buy this historic brand, and it was just too tempting. Yeah. similar to what we were saying before were the temptation of being able to do professional wrestling, but my way,

not somebody else's way, not to have to work through a boss. That's a good thing. My own way was really tempting. And it's been a very interesting journey of seven years now of trying to figure out how to run a historic wrestling company in a very quick,

changing, fast-paced digital rights world. Yeah. Where the most durable entities in that world are sports related. Yeah, yeah, because now I'm here in Nashville and I heard a lot of things about TNA and what was going on. So where are you based?

Are you based out of Chicago or where is it? We're all over the place, really. We have a decentralized office, so everybody kind of lives where they live and we just communicate digitally. It's the type of business that would be impossible even 10 years ago. Yeah.

But now with technology and file sharing and all that, I mean, we just operate as a digital office. Nice, real nice. So let's get back to your music. You're touring this year. So when is that starting? What do you see happening? And what are some of the cities you are planning to go to?

Baltimore, Boston, New York, mostly east of the Mississippi stuff. Good. Are you planning on coming to Nashville? I don't remember off the top of my head. I'm so sorry. Oh, that's okay. It's a lot going on. We just had a baby too.

Oh, congratulations. Thank you, yeah. So we have a nine, six-year-old, and now an infant. like three weeks old. That's awesome. So, excuse me for not knowing my own stuff. Yeah, I get that. That's okay.

It's the first rock solo tour maybe I've ever done. Really? And I'm doing a tour. It's only about 16 shows or so. They're mostly about mid-sized theater-type venues. But I'm playing songs from the 30th anniversary of Melancholy, the 25th anniversary of Machina, and then the new album that the pumpkins have out,

which is called The Gori Mori-May. So it's kind of a rock-based kind of back-to-basics tour. but I'm really looking forward to your fans. They're definitely excited about the tour because maybe the deeper cuts on the set list because as the band has gotten more and more popular again in the last five years, and it's crazy how popular we are again.

That's great. The set list narrows because the expectation of a larger audience is basically what they know. So what's your song list look like? Are you doing the big hits? Are you doing new songs? What are you planning on doing for a song selection?

You mean for pumpkins? Yeah. It's always, we always put in new stuff. Okay. It's actually fairly robust. As far as a band of our stripe, we probably play more new material than most. Nice. That's great.

When you hear a lot of the bands out there, you expect to hear their monster hits. You don't really see or expect to see a lot of new material out there. So I think that's just absolutely fantastic. You're putting new material out there for them to hear. Yeah, the only difficulty for me is I like playing deep cuts.

And so what ends up happening is you've got about 12 to 14 songs that you're expected to play. And as I always like to point out, I'm lucky enough to have 12 or 14 songs that people want to hear me play. But it doesn't leave a lot of room. So instead of saying playing hits, deep cuts and new material, it basically becomes new material and hits. So out of everything that you've got going now and you have a lot of things that are great that are going for you, what's your favorite? it. Or maybe what is at the top of the things that you like to do? I mean, I know you've got the pumpkins out there, but you've got other things going. Does that do as well as you hope and expected it to do? You mean in terms of other musical stuff? Yeah. Oh, no, it's just doing quite well.

Now, there's, um, just to kind of put a halo over the thing, when the band broke up in 2000, and then Jimmy, the drummer and I reformed the band circa 2007. So you had those seven years between in 2001 and 2007, where I was in the hinterland of, well, who are you now without your band? And by the way, as I said before, I was also trying to navigate into declining, historically declining music business, where brand name was more important than even what you were doing musically. So going as a solo artist and trying to create a separate career outside the band was very, very difficult. So the band comes back in 2007, and then we walked into the bus saw a other expectation, which is like, oh, now you're an oldies band.

And I was like, I think 2007, I think I was 40 years old. I was like, boy, it's a little early to be in an oldies band, you know? Yeah, yeah. So there were a lot of years there, and there were lots of variations in the band where, you know, at one point it was just me as the only original member. And now we're back to three quarters of the original band. So what I'm after is went through a lot of weird changes of trying to figure out who we were, what we were musically.

And somehow, in all of it, through all the hardship, the bands come out somehow unscathes and is in many ways more popular than ever, and bestful than ever in a lot of different metrics, especially the streaming numbers are just like crazy off the charts. So now, because I've had all these weird years of trying to figure out who I was and all the other things I got myself into in those times, now it seems to be all additive, where at other times people would point and say,

you being in wrestling is subtractive, you doing a podcast would be subtractive. Now it's all additive. Yeah. So now there's this constant cycle of, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, and people seem very receptive because maybe like a good wrestling angle, you're up. Sure. And if the wind is at your back for the first time in a while, people seem to be interested in your story.

So I can't always put my finger and say there's one specific thing that I can point to. That makes sense. The overall aggregate of it all seems to be very, very favorable right now. That's great. When you can look back at your career and it's, still going. When you look at others, they either become stagnant or just not doing much at all. It gives you a sense of pride that you're doing something like you said earlier, that some people just want to come out and hear what you're doing. Well, you know, I've always been a contentious

public figure. I don't always mean to be, but it's just the way I walk. I do remember being in the 90s at the height of all those things and trying to sort of differentiate in my own mind, let's say the difference between my band and other band. I felt that we had more drive than most of the bands of our generation, and we were made fun of for that, which I always thought was a strange thing coming from a middle-class Midwestern town like Chicago, basically making fun of somebody's work ethic, as if it was something that they should be ashamed of, was always strange to me. I get that. So the band in many ways outworked a lot of other bands with whether or not people agreed with our musical aesthetic decision-making. Sure. So I'm trying to figure what I'm

trying to say to you in the succinct way. It's like you stand for what you stand for, and then, you know, over time, you see other people fall away. How many times have we seen that? Those who maybe were lucky and had one or two good songs and then the genres moved on and the times moved on, they kind of deserved to be left by the wayside because they signed onto something that didn't have any sustain. We always compared ourselves to bands that were far better than us.

Let's use it like a stalking horse, you know, to say, if you want to be up there, among the greats, well, you have to at least reach these kinds of levels. Where we failed at that, we still held ourselves to that standard. And particularly in independent music, we were surrounded by a lot of bands that did not hold themselves to those standards, more about wearing the right t-shirt and having the right mustache. So those value systems, our drive and our willingness to push ourselves maybe past the limits of our ability, I think it really held up very, very well in the long term. But it's been a very strange journey to take because independent music, by and large, does not celebrate that type of mindset. Yes, you are so correct there. I'm here in

Nashville. I've seen people come. I've seen people go. Some have done well and some haven't. I tell my artist exactly what you just said. Go out there and work hard. Work harder than the person that's working for you. And then that gives you just an opportunity for success. You know, it's not a new story to say that when you're young, you're brash and you're bit arrogant and you think, you know, everything is so great. I'm really, really humbled at this point in my life, 58 years old. And like I said, I got three kids under the age 10. I'm really, really humbled to still be in the game, to still have the drive, the hustle

to want to work with other artists. Yeah. It's a really, I don't want to say it's shocking because that's sort of the wrong word, but it's sort of like eye opening. It's like, wow, not only did I make the cut. I'm still here and I'm still excited and I'm still so thankful to be part of this. The music business has so many things that you can point to and just shake your head and say, this is no sense.

People who can't sing, people who can't dance, people who can't write a tune to save their life, people willing to auto tune their way into heaven. I mean, I know you've seen it and I have too. That's so true. But somehow in the weird shake of the thing, the talent, those who are, I guess, have some kind of special thing in their heart, whether it's a Wayland Jennings or a Dolly Parton or a Willie Nelson or, you know, there's so many. I'm just picking Nashville because I'm Nashville country music. Sure. I love Webb Pierce, you know. Yeah. When you back and listen to these great catalogs,

you realize that what really differentiates a star from the rest of them is a particular something. You could even say it's a particular form of insanity. Yes. But the love of music has to be at the foundation of it. So true. And you can pick up any Wayland Jennings album. That man loved music. He knew music. He was great at music, but he loved music. He had idols. He talked about how he stole his hairstyle from this guy and, you know, how he always was in the shadow of this guy. I mean, that's the real business of music, not the shiny American Idol version, which has been sold to a bunch of young people. Yes. But the real in the studio all day, because you can't figure out a better chord in the chorus and all that stuff. That's the real heart of our business.

And I'm really proud to still be part of that. And I'm really humbled that I've somehow carved my way through it because there were many years where people just didn't think I belonged and it was sort of strange. Yeah, I tell a lot of people, until they've driven up and down a road in a van, driven all night long, didn't get any sleep, they really don't know what the music business is all about. And you've got to pay your dues. Yeah, I do remind myself at times when I'm being a bit grumpy, like, you know, 30 years ago, you would have killed for this moment, you know? Yeah, for sure. So you've been in this business for so many years. Looking back, what's one piece of advice that was given to you that because of it, you said to yourself, you know, that may have changed my journey. My father was a musician. He never had any success, but he was a very good musician.

Okay. One night, he heard me down, we lived in this strange house, but he heard me kind of in this sub-basement trying to figure out a song. And I've always been very bad at figuring out songs. I just don't have that ability. Jimmy Chamberlain from the drummer of the pumpkins

is far better at figuring out a song than I am. And my dad heard me hacking away at something. And he said, what are you doing? And I said, I'm trying to figure out this song. He kind of shrugged his shoulders and said, write your own songs. Yeah. He says, if you're ever going to do anything in this business,

it'll be because you write your own songs. Yeah. The most valuable piece of advice I've ever been given in my life, because it was like it was the perfect moment where a light bulb went off, and I thought, I'd rather spend two hours trying to write my own song than learn somebody else's. Nice. That really was great information. I got that when I was 18.

Nice. And I started writing songs not long after. Awesome. And we are, my God, how many years? 40 years later, and I, you know, I'm a good, you know, probably five, 600 songs in. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, this has been great. Great conversation, great information. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and share your story with us. Oh, thank you, Tony. Oh, it's been my pleasure. Thanks again.

Thanks for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed the show. This has been a Tony Mantor production. For more information, contact media at plateaumusic.com.