Why Has Billy Corgan been forgotten?

Because sometimes things work out for the best.

he was always up there with courtney for the drama... drugged out of his gourd.

he's gone the full spectrum of politics and back again. just a str8 up douchenozzle. that needed to be 51/50 at some point.

but honestly, I think it was sometime when he got fat and sounded like toad

and when their original music got remastered people realized nope, that's how he always sounded.

He's very busy making tea in the North Shore Chicago suburbs.

Cause he's a douchebag. And his music sucks

Because he needed to be forgotten. R4 is correct.

I never understood the appeal of Smashing Pumpkins or him.

His voice was always so irritating. Worse than Ozzy Osbourne. I was never a fan, except for “1979”, which I think is beautiful, and makes me feel pangs of the dreaded, shameful affliction known as nostalgia.

The trajectory of Billy Corgan vs. Dave Grohl is really astonishing. Billy is about 100 times more talented, but Dave Grohl, through sheer force of faux-congeniality and being an industry stooge is the more famous one.

Because he's ugly and talentless.

He was a complete dick to everyone including fans. People enjoy watching people like that fail

He'a not attractive, his voice is painful, he's gone cuckoo too many times to forgive, and the music he makes (which I like, sans his voice) sounds decidedly 1990s to younger people who are trained only to respond positively to EDM, hiphop and Jack Antonoff sounds.

Once upon a time he was arguably cute in an unorthodox way.

Now he looks like someone who might inspire a Star Wars alien creature.

he looks like darth vader without the mask

I love Siamese Dream and parts of Melon Collie but nothing much after that. To paraphrase one rock critic, "what does it say that Al Gore's vocal cadence is sexier than Corgan's?".

He was my neighbor at the peak and living in Chicago was a bit removed from the scene. Plus he is super shy and hasn't aged well, expresses weird opinions, and has very poor taste in friends and causes. Good riddance.

R15 Did you ever see people banging in his yard? He said that it wasn't an uncommon sight.

R15, was he a douche?

He contributed some weepy solo stuff to a movie I made with Sharon Stone. It stunk worse than my performance!

Very, very private. The yard had a big gate and I never saw anyone not in his entourage in it. Not a douche, but very unapproachable and basically a geeky nerd. His first wife was an absolute tool. First person I ever saw in Chicago wearing the kinder-whore trend. Walked around Southport with a lollipop. She couldn't stand being in Chicago so they divorced and she moved back to LA.

R19 Billy was also fucking Courtney Love while he was married to her(also while Courtney was married to Kurt), so there's that.

He was talented, but he was kind of obnoxious. He was very prolific. In fact, maybe he wrote too many songs. It was just too much to keep up with.

Also, he went bald. At least he was honest about it. (He doesn't wear a knit hat in 100-degree temperatures like The Edge does.). The kind of fans that he courted with his drama are too shallow to pay to see a bald man sing love songs.

R21 you are right about Corgan being prolific. Some of the best SP songs are B-sides.

I think, after Kurt, Corgan wrote the best songs of the 90s. At least for male driven rock.

The reason they didn't stand the test of time? His voice.

Had he let someone else sing most of his songs (sorta like Pete Townsend)? The Pumpkins probably would have aged a lot better.

His voice is definitely an acquired taste. But their first three albums plus the B-side collection Pisces Iscariot are all terrific. They got lumped in with grunge but really were really doing more of a classic rock/shoegaze mashup.

R23 or like Martin Gore getting Dave Gahan to sing his songs. I feel like Billy's music is so insular and often egg headed that only he can really get away with it.

Good point, R25. If a different singer couldn't connect to his songs? That would defeat the purpose for sure. But assuming he found someone who could? Might be great.

R24, I agree. Songs like Gish, 1979, and Rhinoceros? His voice really works.

But imagine Tonight, Tonight or Today with a real singer that DID connect with music/lyrics?

I didn't discover the pumpkins until long after their peak. Was it a big deal when he lost his hair?

R27 No, nobody cared. He had cute peach fuzz (and essentially made that look acceptable in the 90s), but people were far more fixated on the songs and a few of their music videos than Billy's hair.

Now those bald bitches from P.U.S.A., we all noticed their Kojak-looking heads.

Corgan was never a sex symbol like Kurt. He also had a stinky personality and a bad interviewee. He is one of those rare people who found success almost exclusively via their talent.

Here he is today,

Kurt, Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell were the grunge hot guys.

Billy Corgan was not grunge.

He was grunge adjacent, R32.

Don't be obtuse.

Well, it is a thread about Billy Corgan. So maybe it's fitting.

Now he owns a wrestling company, NWA Powerrr.

"ice tea season"

Oh, dear

Ooh his tea shop,looks cool!

Cobain supposedly referred to him as "Pear Shaped Box". He looks ridiculous these days since he got fat and tries to cover it up by wearing all black and black trench coats. Also, what's up with the stupid makeup he's embellishing himself with? It all kind of reminds me of what Boy George did years ago when he packed on a bunch of weight.

I was never a fan, his pretentiousness ruined it for me. I went to see Garbage in 1996 or 97 and Smashing Pumpkins was the headliner. They were horrible live and he insulted the audience many times. I think at one point he was booed. I've hated him ever since.

Corgan is a very good guitarist and a talented songwriter. That being said, I also think his voice can get annoying at times. I always thought the saga between him and Courtney Love was fascinating. They were always bickering about the extent to which he helped her write music, and they seemed to vacillate—despite it all, though, he has always seemed to remain loyal to her on some level, and her, him. I remember reading that she joined him onstage a few years back at a Smashing Pumpkins show, so they are apparently on good terms.

R7 it is kind of sad that someone like Dave Grohl has achieved the status he has on such little talent. He was a beast of a drummer, but as a songwriter, guitarist, and singer, he is the textbook definition of mediocre. There is nothing interesting about him, and it shows in the Foo Fighters' music. The only reason he has had the more long-lasting public attention over someone like Corgan is because he was in Nirvana. The only positive thing I can say about Grohl is that he was adorable in the '90s. I would have fucked the shit out of him. Unfortunately, today, he's bloated and the long hair/goatee combo does him no favors.

Corgan lost his hair because Court hexed him!

R39 Billy did write the riffs to more than a handful of Hole songs. Whether that constitutes 100% of writing credit (minus lyrics) is a complicated issue. A riff is not necessarily the melody. That's not a knock to Courtney per se, more of a knock on Erlandsen, and only because Billy was so prolific in the 90s. He was like Prince, just hanging out riffs like it was no big deal.

Courtney killed that performance, R40.

Live Through This really was a fantastic album.

Courtney doesn't get credit for being one of the best lyricists of all time.

Courtney looked trashed at this performance with the Smashing Pumpkins a few years ago. I think this was just before she had extricated herself from Sam Lutfi and got off the pills again. You can see here that she's practically nodding off during the song—no energy at all. I've seen her live three times, and she usually has a playful, rambunctious "fuck you" stage presence—none of which is to be found here.

He’s a QAnon loon and nobody likes him.

R44 The saddest thing about that 30 year anniversary show is not Courtney, but the fact that Billy could only famous peers Billy could get to show up were Courtney Love, Peter Hook, and the singer from AFI. He's burned so many bridges.

*the fact that the only famous peers

R43 please marry me. I have been saying the same thing for years. I made a thread on here about it once awhile back, and some pretentious asshole (who probably has an art history degree from Oberlin) told me my music taste was "jejune," that I "don't listen to a lot of music," and proceeded to try and school me on the "masterworks" of Tori Amos and Ani Difranco. I hope that person has since been run over by a semi truck and splattered across a street.

I wouldn't even care if I found out that Kurt and Billy wrote every single riff on Live Through This and Celebrity Skin—in the end, it doesn't matter to me, because the lyrics are fantastic. When you stack them up against the majority of what was being written in the alternative/punk circles at the time, it becomes especially apparent. I actually think some of her most interesting stuff is the abstract, off-the-cuff writing she did on Pretty on the Inside—when you really listen to/read the lyrics across album, it's an absolute nightmare. There's nothing quite like it.

R48 I think her and Mark E. Smith wrote lyrics that cut deep like no one else. I've never been a fan of Tori's sad waif thing. Musicians should slap you in the face with their music, not bore you to death. I like everything she did up until Celebrity Skin. 20 Years in the Dakota is one of her best songs.

I knew Billy in Chicago before the Pumpkins. He worked in a little record shop by himself. He was quite shy and nice. Everything I've seen of him since, especially the later years. He comes off quite pretentious. If he is indeed a conservative. Well, then he just sucks.

R59 was is Empire records on Montrose?

Billy owns Madame Zusu's in Highland Park? That's where I grew up. I'll be there again next month. Will Billy be taking my order at his cafe? Stay tuned!

[quote] Kurt, Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell were the grunge hot guys.

Layne Staley was much hotter than Kurt or Eddie.

I saw them live back in the day with Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam, and they were so boring. Billy had a surly attitude. I like more of SP's music than those other two bands, but they definitely put on the worst live show.

R49 I find Tori Amos's music and lyrics terribly dull. I can't connect with her at all. Ani Difranco is not far off either. There is something about the rawness of Love's music that resonates with me—her lyrics are smart, but you also get the sense while listening to her that it could all go off the rails at any moment. There's an element of recklessness, danger, and surprise to her that people like Difranco and Amos don't have.

The truth is that lyrics don't need to be overly brainy to be good—you can evoke a lot in someone's head without saying much. It's about being economical with your words, which Courtney is. The lyrics to "Northern Star" alone stack up against anything Amos or Difranco has written. People just like to trash Courtney because she is considered by the masses to be a lowly and unserious person because she's obnoxious and a drug addict.

R54, are you a huge PJ Harvey fan too? Sounds like you'd be a big fan.

R53, I hate that people think that Alice in Chains was just a dumb frat bro brand. Their EPs are especially good, very bluesy.

R55 yes, I love PJ. Lyrically speaking, she is more elusive than Courtney, but it all comes from the same raw place. Her first few albums are especially gobsmacking. Personality-wise, PJ is obviously a lot more enigmatic. Courtney wears her heart on her sleeve, while PJ comes across as more guarded about her demons.

R50, that's back when I saw them play a show in Evanston for beer money. I forgot about them, and then the next thing I knew, they were the biggest band in the country.

I used to hate Billy’s voice in the 90s but finally came to appreciate some Smashing Pumpkin songs a decade or so later. The best song? Thirty-three. It came up on Spotify one day and I hadn’t heard it in 20 years and it was so nostalgic/sentimental of a song that I teared up. Definitely one of SP’s best soft songs off Mellon Collie.

By the way, saw Dave Grohl and his kid or kids in the Burbank airport a few years back. Grohl looked like every other tired parent flying with their kids on a Sunday morning—bags under his eyes. Quiet. I don’t know much about him as a person, but agree with others that SP had better lyrics and musician talent with guitars and melodies than the Foo Fighters (sorry Dave)!

for the DL age group for whom this music was the shit, do you still listen to it? What from that era holds up?

R60 Siamese Dream is a near perfect album. Gish is worth a listen. I never like Mellon Collie that much. Galapagos, Thru the Eyes of Ruby, Cupid de Locke, 1979, and Jelly Belly are great songs. Usually I'm a fan of ramshackle double albums, but Mellon Collie does seem a mess in places: To Forgive, By Starlight, Stumbeline. Pisces Iscariot is a compilation albums but it's as good as any LP and has one of their best songs, Starla. Adore is a bit of a dud. Billy tried to go electric but failed because he can't program for shit. Machina is Billy doing drop D sludge metal and this is the point in time where he disappears up his ass trying to brand himself as high concept. Even then it has some major high points: Glass and the Ghost Children and Stand Inside your Love. The guitar work and drumming on that album is some of the best SP ever produced. SP broke up after that and Billy formed Zwan. They had a few good songs: Chrysanthemum, A New Poetry. Everything since 2003 has been just barely listenable

Resorting to the Addams Family aesthetic to hide one's pasty, weird-headed homeliness and lazy-chub flabbiness only makes one look like a demented virgin who eventually will kill his parents.

And one Fester in the family is enough.

He looks like a castrato, especially in his hefty bag priest getup.

I love these dancers....back when MTV events were something special. (and the song too)