Billy Corgan is in a Chicago studio trying to nail a guitar part for a forthcoming Smashing Pumpkins album and blowing a little smoke. “If I screw it up, it’s because you made me rush,” he says. He’s kidding (I think), but the familiar Corgan intensity is undeniable. After a tumultuous year, he is doing what he does best: throwing himself into his work like nothing else matters.
On Tuesday, his soundtrack with keyboardist Mike Garson for the movie “Stigmata” will arrive in stores — a series of eerie instrumentals reflecting influences such as German avant-gardist Karlheinz Stockhausen, Sun Ra and Mike (“Tubular Bells”) Oldfield.
And early next year, the new Pumpkins album will surface. Corgan says it’s “70 percent done” and that 40 songs have been written for it — only half of which will make it onto the record. “We did a little club tour a few months ago to play some of the new songs,” Corgan says, “and already about half of those have been thrown off because we keep raising the bar.” The album reunites Corgan, guitarist James Iha and bassist D’Arcy with drummer Jimmy Chamberlin — fired in 1996 for drug abuse but recently welcomed back into the fold — and producer Flood, who last worked with the band on its most successful album, “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” (1995).
Corgan knows this next album will be a critical one for the band. With the 1998 “Adore” album, the band retooled its sound to compensate for the absence of Chamberlin’s walloping backbeat, veering away from its battle-tested guitar attack toward keyboard-soaked atmospherics. Though it sold 3 million copies worldwide and contained some of the most beautiful and daring music of the band’s career, “Adore” never got its due from the Pumpkins faithful, and many industry observers judged it a stiff because it didn’t approach the multimillion sales figures of its predecessors.
Insult was followed by injury. The band played a series of charity shows last summer, but its offer to play a free show in Grant Park on the 4th of July was denied by the city. A subsequent concert at the New World Music Theatre in Tinley Park raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for a local charity, but the bad taste lingered. The Pumpkins fired their management team, the powerful Q Prime duo of Peter Mensch and Cliff Bernstein, and pointedly did not play a Chicago date on a brief club tour last spring.
“Stigmata” suggests that Corgan isn’t through creating surprises. It’s a dark, futuristic head-trip composed in a mere three weeks by the usually methodical Pumpkins auteur and Garson, a former David Bowie accomplice and “Adore” tour keyboardist. “Identify,” the only non-instrumental, is sung by Natalie Imbruglia. But Corgan cautions that listeners shouldn’t regard it as a prelude to the sound of the new Pumpkins album: “Don’t try and outguess us,” he says during the course of a wide-ranging interview.
Q–“Stigmata” sounds like a weirder, deeper exploration of some of the themes on “Adore.”
A–It was about making music without having the pressure of making Pumpkins music. It was a freer space. I know it’s hard for people to understand, but the Pumpkins as a unit determines the shape of the music. A lot of people think I ram home my agenda, but the music really comes from the heart and soul of the band. Some of this music (on “Stigmata”) is closer to my personal taste than some of the Pumpkins music. But the Pumpkins music is what it is. It’s not a choice, it just happens.
Q–One of the “Stigmata” tracks refers to Stockhausen — and here I thought you grew up listening to Black Sabbath and Van Halen.
A–Personally, I’ve been leaning toward avant-garde music lately. When the band started I was totally anti-pop. I could not stand it. But over time, I got really into pop music, because I thought it was the most subversive thing in the world. So having lived there for about five years, I’m ready to throw up (laughs). The classic song structures aren’t what I like to do anymore. I look at the way Dylan broke convention, taking folk-song form and breaking it into something different, more rambling. I’m trying to find a language like that for myself.
Q–Did you feel burned by the way “Adore” was perceived? Word is you fired your management company over it.
A–They (Q Prime) tried to get across the idea they were fired because we didn’t sell enough records, which is not true. “Adore” was a record that challenged everyone’s truthfulness and integrity. When things are rolling, everybody looks like a genius. A year before I could have spit on a spoon, and they would’ve rushed it out. But when things get a little funky, that’s when you find out who people really are. And it became obvious to me that management was only interested in me as a commercial act. They have no interest in me or the band from an artistic level. And I’m just not interested in that.
I think this is a funny time for music, and no one seems to know what the future holds. But when things get crazy, you have to ask yourself, what’s really important? So, there were two things for me personally: I wanted to get out of these situations where I feel business is more important than the music, and I wanted to put the band back together, at least put the band back together for this record.
Q–And how’s it working out?
A–Pretty good. It’s always sitting on a keg of dynamite. But musically I’m really happy, really excited.
Q–How did you come to invite Chamberlin back in the band?
A–I don’t want to talk about all that stuff. But I will tell you that we absolutely wanted to make this record with him. It was going to be the full band back together or that would have been the end of it.
Q–You were seriously considering breaking up the band?
A–Let me put it this way: I’m glad my band is back together for the moment. How long that is going to last I don’t know. But I know it’s good now, and everything else is just . . . Everybody was patting me on my back telling me how great I was for five years, long as I kept selling records. Suddenly there is something wrong with me, the band, the band’s ideology. Things go up and down. It popped me out of the idea that the world of commerce has any merit in it at all. There is no redemption in that world. And it really brought me back to the alternative root. It’s really about good music and playing good shows. The soil of this record is born out of the . . . it’s like some girlfriend breaking up with you for the wrong reasons. Why did that happen? It just brings us back to what we do best. The culture of celebrity, the culture of who’s in, who’s out, after a while you realize it is so boringly predictable. And you realize there is nothing fair about it all. There is no integrity in it at all. I think a lot of people took glee in the supposed fall of the Smashing Pumpkins. But it’s the perception, not the reality, because we’re doing exactly what we want.
Q–I was struck by the fact that the Pumpkins played charity shows in ’98 and were pretty much ignored. Meanwhile, the hot new bands who played Woodstock ’99 presided over a festival that ended in rape and pillage.
A–You put together a money festival, and that’s what you get. You can’t put all these people together, charge them all that money and try to pretend it’s all about peace and love. The key bands that were represented, by and large, were not bands that had anything to do with that message. The whole thing was bad news and will go down as a real blight on so-called Generation Y.
Q–What’s surprising is how the political correctness — respect for women, minorities, gays — championed by the early ’90s alternative bands has disappeared so fast.
A–It’s sad — dead and gone. If you had asked me in 1994, I would have said the world was changing and changing for the better. And now I think all we did was swing the pendulum one way so that it could be swung back even harder in the other. It was almost like everything that was good got used against (the movement toward tolerance). The integrity got turned into cunning cynicism. A lot of what the Woodstock bands stand for wouldn’t pass the kangaroo court of alternative rock. No one even blinks anymore. Because everyone is bought and sold.
Q–So have you forgiven the mayor yet?
A–(Laughs) I can give you the private answer and I can give you the public answer. I love Chicago. I really do. I think it’s a fantastic city. I’m really encouraged by where this city is heading in the last 5-10 years. And that’s all I’ve got to say.
Q–The Grant Park affair could have been handled better, though. Was there a little payback when you didn’t schedule Chicago for your club tour last spring?
A–I think the city severely underestimated the reaction when they canceled the show. But listen, any confusion I have about the place of my birth is much deeper than any single event. I think the band brought a lot of good things to the city. And I think people will appreciate our legacy over time.
