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Infamous Words: Billy Corgan Quotes
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Quotes!
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On Song Titling:
"Say you write a song about a chandelier, and the chandelier gives off light. And the light is the color red and red reminds you of the color your not supposed to wear around a bull. So you name the song 'Cow.'"
On Death:
"I'm not going to die glamorously. I'll probably be eating a Twinkie, take a bite, and fall over."
On Pre-Show Volume Check:
"Well, what we normally do, is every city we go to, we hire a fifteen year old boy and we turn it up until he starts to make a funny face and then we turn it up about ten notches louder than that."
"We're the worst band in America...that makes us the best."
"We're a bit preposterous, but we're also a really special band."
"This friend of mine asked me 'Do you really mean it when you sing "God is empty just like me"?, and 363 days out of the year, the answer is no. But those two days I feel it, I feel it pretty intensely."
"You know, my father's biggest complaint recently is people keep telling him he looks like me."
"Me and my father have the same slouch and walk. I've been to family gatherings, after dinner everyone goes into the living room, there will be eight people all sitting in the same Corgan way."
"I have a hard time thinking of men trying to sing my songs, because I think my perspective is definitely female."
"The closer I get back to being who I really am, the stronger the music gets."
"The simplest way that I can understand therapy, is that we're born a certain way, we're taught to be something different, and we spend our lives trying to unravel it."
"The world is not set up for a band like the Smashing Pumpkins--it's set up for bands who can play the angle better."
"When you move artistically, the natural inclination is to denounce everything that has gone before."
"On an idealistic level, doing a double comceptual album is totally uncool, but I'm going pull it off."
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On Religion:
"I don't know if god would agree with me, but believing in God is kind of unimportant when compared to believing in yourself. Because if you go with the idea that God gave you a mind and an ability to judge things, then he would want you to believe in yourself and not worry about believing in him. By believing in yourself you will come to the conclusion that will point to something."
"Certainly the media saturation is way worse. Now you turn on the TV, and there's fashion and culture and news aimed directly at 16-year olds..I've met kids who get laid at 10,12. I didn't lose my virginity until I was 18. Kids are acting grown-up, but they're not grown up inside."
"I've thought many times, 'I can't write this,' but on my own little planet I found the courage to write it because it was true. I put aside fear of Father being angry with me. It's hard though;the world pales in comparison with the stature of a parent. In some small-consolation way, my parents feel I'm helping people by giving them something to identify with. They feel proud in a sort of reverse way. My mom's proud of the fact that lots of kids look up to me."
"The whole point of the Smashing Pumpkins was to blow everybody away, so it didn't make sense to be funny at the same time. We were too busy trying to pummel your f**king head in."
"Well, we have brought certain things upon ourselves. I've certainly brought things upon us with my mouth."
"We had a wonderful time with this kind of grunge awareness, where suddenly rock was cool again. People wanted to hear loud guitars. It was a great time, and I'm glad we were there. But the gimmick part has worn off."
"The weird nihilism that permeates Mellon Collie is extremely relevant to what's going on right now. So many kids are intelligent and articulate, but they don't know what to do with themselves."
"We can look you in the eye and talk to you about life, heart, love, rock'n'roll, whatever, but we do not have the moral authority to tell people how to vote or what to do with their bodies. We are just a rock band."
"We've come to the conclusion that we're exactly how we want to be. If you're going to put us onstage for 90 min. of three hours, we are going to give you more than anyone else, and we are going to kiss your a** harder than anyone else. You can laugh as us, poke fingers at us, but for what it is, we're as good as it's going to get."
"You can only be this high-powered mojo rock band for so long, then you just can't look people in the eye. So, we've projected our own demise."
"I have always said that if one person leaves, that's the end of the band. I'm not going to carry on with a faux Jimmy or faux D'arcy. No f**king way."
"The Pumpkins love rock-and-roll, we absolutely love it, but we also thing it's a flatulent, ego-serving, kiddie playground. You can have your cake and eat it too."
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More Quotes!
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Even More Quotes!
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"I don't even want to discuss how many people told me that making an album with 28 songs at this in our career was crazy. Everyone, including the people at our record label, wanted us to just take a nice, safe path, and produce another album like Siamese Dream. My attitude was just the opposite. Thankfully, it hasn't turned out badly."
"Our concerts have it's momments when it's stupid, where it's funny, little cheerleading momments, and there's momments when we are just totally crushing the audience."
"There's a lot of chemistry in the band that the outside world could never witness. In our band, D'arcy is the moral conscience-it's really hard to do something if D'arcy thinks its f**ked."
"For, like, two years, every interview was, and occasionally still is, 'Don't you guys hate each other?'."
"The music is all we care about,-so if that's bad, then we're bad!"
"Back in 1979, I was bigger than most kids by a lot. When I was 12 I led my baseball team in home runs. By the time I was 14, I had been totally passed up. That's when I turned to guitar."
"I was never violent, but I had this streak underneath me all along. People who have known me all my life, when they first saw us play, they were like "Holy f**k." Because I's turn into this beastie. They had never seen that side of me, but I knew it was there."
"I was a jock, but I wasn't on the sports team. I played guitar, but I didn't hang out with the stoners. I just couldn't hang in any way, and when you're young and can't hang, you oppose. So I was anti-everything, f**k you all."
"The Smashing Pumpkins was never meant to be a small band. It was going to either be a big band, or no band."
A Fax From Billy To A Reporter Who Said The Pumpkins Sucked:
"I'm glad that I'm such a good rhymer,
better than being a social climber,
just because I'm a bit brighter,
then some f**king writer."
"I almost feel that we're more powerful being accoustic than we are electric."
On Playing Live:
"I think it's probably because we didn't do dumb things like, 'Wave your hands in the air' that we suffered a little, but I would rather suffer and not be a fool."
Quotes collected from different Internet sources through the years; special thanks to The Man I'm Supposed To Be Web Site. Check it out using my link on my first page of my site!
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