"The goal was to see the four of us on a stage…"
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Ahead of their full, in-depth interview going out at 6pm tonight, Kerrang! are excited to unveil a snippet of The Smashing Pumpkins' reunion chat with Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s Beats 1 show.
In the video below, you'll see the Pumpkins' current line-up discuss former bassist D'arcy Wretzky and their plans for a reunion with her included (which, of course, eventually fell through), as well a D'arcy's stage anxiety, and how things were unfortunately left.
Check it out below – to hear the full interview, please tune in to Zane Lowe’s show on Apple Music’s Beats 1 today from 6pm via Apple.co/zane:
Read a transcript of the interview, too:
Billy Corgan: People like the click bait stuff. But the reality is… it's like I had this moment, and not to put James on the spot, but I had this moment when we were working at Rick Rubin's on the music that you heard. And I looked across the room and I just had this sensory wave memory of being in my dad's house with James and just this relationship that goes back now 31 years just blows my mind but here we are. We're still playing guitars and we're still little kids chasing the riff or something. It's like, it's crazy. It's beyond my conception.
Zane Lowe: Let me ask a tough question because we're going to bro down but I'm interested because the Billy, the human being sitting before me right here who's listening to...
Billy: The myth.
Zane: No, the person! Even though I know when you put the hoodie on there's a little myth back in the room today. But the Billy Corgan, the writer, the artist, the band member, who's sitting there listening to your idea, or your songs, or your vision, and that's always nerve-racking no matter where you are in life to share those ideas.
Jimmy Chamberlin: It can be, yeah.
Zane: Is it the same Billy Corgan that would listen to James's ideas when you were giving songs away on Siamese Dream and Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness or are you a different kind of collaborator now. Are you more generous?
Billy: No, I'm the same. I'm ruthless.
Jimmy: No, he's still brutal. I think I brought in six ideas with the hope that one of them would be something that we could work on together. But I had no expectations other than brutal honesty.
Billy: I think that's why we're a good unit because we started with nothing. We have that honesty with each other. The moment James Iha walked in my life, changed my life forever. The moment Jimmy walked in our life, changed our lives forever. Doesn't mean every day was perfect and we held hands and sang around the campfire. But somehow, in the midst of our own individual and collective chaos, we were able to make these diamonds. That is the shared thing. And we all at the end of the day still kind of scratch our head because we don't even really know what we did right.
Zane: Yeah, look you've navigated through the next subject beautifully and very respectfully but I haven't asked the question and I haven't been able to talk to you about it. And you know I'm a fan and I would love to know. There is that initial chemistry and that moment in time where there were four of you and one was D'arcy and she played an instrumental role in those early albums and there was all that talk. And it's not really about going over all the, why didn't it happen stuff. It's more like, now it's happened. Now you are playing live and the new album is incredible and it would have been very special if it could have happened.
James Iha: It would have been different. But it just didn't work out to be simple about it.
Billy: I spent literally two years rebuilding our relationship, albeit at a distance, I could never get her in the room. But the goal was to see the four of us on a stage. And I was cool if it was going to be one song or a whole show. The whole thing broke down when we had to start talking about time, and reality, and opportunity. And, of course the business part of it all, and there was a wide, wide gap between what I thought was a reasonable expectation of ability given that she hadn't been on stage in 19 years. But she suffered from incredible stage anxiety. We're talking like a 10 out of 10. And that was that was part of the equation always. So when you saw her on a stage, she was inwardly going through a lot more than you would have thought because her state her stage demeanor was very icy. People used to call her Ice Queen.
That was a cool nickname the fans gave her, the Ice Queen. But inside there was a lot of inner stuff going on. So when I started trying to have a real conversation about, look here's the shows, here's what we want to do, here's the pressures involved. What would be a reasonable expectation for you to enter in on? The difference between what I saw was a very sympathetic and empathetic opportunity was, no. It has to be like this. Okay. Now we're back into the person I dealt with back in the day. I'm not that person anymore, but now I'm dealing with the person I left off with in 1999. And the answer was, no that's just not going to happen. And the reaction wasn't, well, let's get together in a room, or let's play and let me show you that you're wrong. It was, no. Then the threats started. Then the mendacity started.
Remember: tune in to Zane Lowe’s show on Apple Music’s Beats 1 today from 6pm via Apple.co/zane.
