Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Introducing One Song: The Smashing Pumpkins "Cherub Rock"

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Introducing One Song: The Smashing Pumpkins "Cherub Rock" · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin Luxury. Today's song is from one of the greatest
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: bands in alternative rock history and one of the best
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: albums of the nineteen nineties.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: That's right, t'alla.
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: And if you've seen this band perform live recently, chances
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: are they close their set with this epic rock anthem.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: That's right. It's one song, and that song is Chair
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Up Rock by the Smashing Pumpkins. I'm actor, writer, director,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter and musicologist Luxury aka the
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: guy who Whispers and.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: On the Internet.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: So hey, we're going back. We're putting on our flannel shirts.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: We are watching Seinfeld in real time. It is the nineties,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: and I think we have to just embrace our alternative
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: rock IIDs, that's right. This is the episode where we're
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: talking about, isn't it. Yeah, yeah, all eight Yeah, we're
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: talking about Smashing Pumpkins. And before we dive into the song,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: let's scale back a bit. I know that the Smashing
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Pumpkins are huge for both of us, but what music
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: memories do you have of the Pumpkins and how have
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: they influenced you.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: I just want to say this is one of these
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: bands that it was a moment in time that really
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: did a lot of like I was gonna say damage
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: to my psyche, but like it's just impacted me greatly.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: The sound, the lyrics, everything about them was really important.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: I'll never forget the first time I heard them. I
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: was a proud member of the sub Pop Singles Club,
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: which was the record label Subpop that you know Nirvana
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: and mud Honey. Yeah, and I literally submobed a.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Maker of T shirts worn by middle aged Dan exactly
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: the airport exactly.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: Well at the time, you'd get like a seven in
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: single every month and get in the mail, and that's
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: what I got. And Tristessa came to send nineteen ninety.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: It was their first single, and I loved it immediately.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Let me play a little bit. This is what I
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: would have heard Little Little Luxury in nineteen ninety.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: That's a very cool song. You've got that. Yeah, Little
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: were like, oh, I like this, I like this.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: This was like I'm a drummer in this moment, and
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: I'm a drummer in my college band, and that's Jimmy
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: Chamberlain on drums, and I'm immediately a huge fan of
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: Jimmy Chamberlain. The way he opens that song and is
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: We're going to get into Jimmy Chamberlain later the episode,
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: but he's a very special musical influence.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Usually when you talk Smashing Pumpkins, it's a lot about
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Billy Corgan, but we're going to talk about all these
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: wonderful members in the group.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're also a big special I have a.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Fan smash, a Puckus fan. When you said, hey, let'sen
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: just match your mother's episode, I was like, yes, please listen.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Simeon's Dream is the is one of those CDs that
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: you saw in everybody's dorm room if you were a
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: college kid in the nineties. I was there. I saw
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: those CDs. I was more of a melancholy fan, full
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: of full disclosure. I saw the album art and I
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, you know, I know I like today.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: You know that was my song off of Siamese Dream.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: But I was like, let me check out more from
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: this band. And my favorite Smashing Pumpkin story is that
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: I was driving down Sunset Boulevard, like right after I graduated,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: and the Virgin Megastore used to sit on the corner
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: of Crescent Heights and Sunset. It's funny how much space.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: CD stores used to take it right. Oh.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: I used to the Virgin Megastore in New York. That
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: was a big destination, the stations.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: You could listen to CDs all day. But I'll never forget.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: They had blocked off the road and I was like,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: what's going on here? And I saw a band setting
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: up on the rooftop. No way, and I seriously I
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: parked on like Laurel, right next to the Laugh Factory,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: and I walked over and I was like, oh my gosh,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: it's smashing pumps is on the roof of the Virgin
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Megastore and they played this whole big concert with songs
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: from Siamese Dream and Melancholy, and I think a door
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: had just come out, and like the streets. We filled
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: the streets of that big corner. If you've ever been
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: in LA that's like a really big corner.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: It was this like a beatles like YouTube things.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know how spontaneous it was. Maybe the word
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: had gotten out, like it was a pretty huge crowd
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: of people, but like the sun was going down over
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: the hills and like Billy and James and Jimmy and
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Dark and it was that was when I realized, you
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: know what, my my fandom of this band is above
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: some other bands.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're real special band. Agree, that's so cool.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean just leaping ahead a little bit, like
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: when I started making music myself. So many influences, you know.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: At the time, there were a handful of things that
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: like I knew I was trying to do, and some
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: things that later on I'm like, oh, I was thinking
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: about this band. Smashing Pupkins were definitely front and center
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: for me. There was something about the sound being this
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: combination of epic rock, bomb bass frankly, and then like
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: the bombas is a big the no and then I
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: love the unabashedness. It's like, let's put bombast in this.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: That's what he wants on a bash at bomb bass.
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: He It's a goal of his at a time when
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: that was not what people it was. It had fallen
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: from favor and it was it was an unusual choice.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: We're going to talk about that a little bit later.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: But I was also kind of wanting to do a
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: similar thing and San Francisco early, you know, two thousands,
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: where I was like, you know, there's a lot of
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: indie stuff that was broken beat was happening and kind
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: of obscure, and I was like, no, I want to
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: like swing for the fences and have these.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Big guitar crunchy rips and stuff like that.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: And I kind of had a similar experience where like
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: my scene didn't really embrace me. San Francisco in the
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: early two thousands was not super kind to lecture embracing. Well,
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: you know, we can get into some theories I have,
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: but I definitely felt some identification with Billy's kind of sensibility.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: And part of why I wanted to do this song
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: is because it is about this exact phenomenon of like
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: the gatekeepers in the indie rock community and the gatekeepers
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: on MTV, and his feeling of like screw you guys,
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: Like this is the music that's real to me and
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: that's coming naturally and that I want to make even
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: if it doesn't seem cool to you guys.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. I love that he was going
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: at the gate keepers, by the way, they were on Virgin. Yes,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: a very first record industry job after college. You know,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: my first record label job was at La Face, my
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: second one was at Virgin. You know, this is right
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: after college, and so I actually have a ton of
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: pristine smashing pumpkins.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Do you really?
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: I really do? Like, you know, like the so Melancholy
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: was a double CD, so I have like the four vinyl?
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Are you serious? I was again drooling with ND Smashing.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: As a double vinyl because as it was a single CD,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: but they really wanted that one and eighty gram you
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: know how much vinyl.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: This is like sort of an obscure, kind of an anecdote,
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: but like the moment this record came out was the
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: moment I had held held off for years on CDs.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: I was like, what a garbage technology? Remember long boxes
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: and all that. I hated it, But in this moment,
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: I was like I was at college and I was like,
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: it's it's I didn't have enough room to always be
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: carding around and like I made the conversion with Siamese
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: Dream Yes, And I regret it to this day that
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: I don't actually have it on vinyl and I had
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: Gish on vinyl. A big regret in my life is
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: where did that vinyl go? The fact that you have
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: all this vinyl, I'm very very.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Forget that we ever discussed this, and maybe there'll be
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: something for you come toss.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: I do have birthday coming up.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: It's true, but listen. Yeah, Smashic Pumpkins is literally one
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: of the most successful rock bands of all time. They've
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: sold thirty million albums. This song is off of Siamese Dream.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: It went four times platinum and Melancholy Infinite Sadness and
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: actually Diamonds it sold ten million or more.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Copirazy. That doesn't happen anymore, No, it really doesn't.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: It was literally like the second they came up with
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: that certification.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Here used it again.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the ultimate humorous but people used to
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: pay for art. Smashing Pumpkins has had one number one hit,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: seven top ten hits. They've been nominated for eleven Grammys
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: and they won too. They won nineteen ninety seven for
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Bullet with Butterfly Wings great song, and they won in
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight for the End Is the Beginning? Is
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: the end? I don't know the choice?
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, visual choice, bouncy.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: That sounds like they became friends with the Grammys.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, people like you've been screwing us for years.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Hey, what song do you want to be nominated for?
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: You gotta give us one. Just pick a song. We'll
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: take it. Song, We'll take it homey.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: And will win Best Hard Rock perform.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: It's a fine song, but it's not like one that
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: is in the pantheon.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: And by the way, all the success very much deserved
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: by the Pumpkins. I mean, if you think about their hits,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: it's nineteen seventy nine, Bullet with butterfly Wings, Disarm Today,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: my own personal favorite, Tonight Tonight. And when we were
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: preparing this episode, we had a listen. We had a
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: vigorous back and forth about which of these songs that
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: we would do. But you know, in some cases we
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: didn't have the stems. Hello Tonight, Tonight could not find
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: you anywhere. In other cases, it isn't necessarily the song
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: that we wanted to discuss. I personally love nineteen seventy nine.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: I love that song too, Yes your Poets and I'm
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: meant yeah.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: And this is one of the things we discussed. It's
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: not the most smashing pumpkinny. It's it's kind of a
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: little outlier. That's a little bit of an outlier. Latrie
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: help us understand what led to that wonderfully distinct smashing
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: pumpkin sound.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: A really unique thing about Billy Corgan in this moment
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety three, when when this record is being
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: made and when this song comes out, is that he's
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: bringing his heavy metal background to indie rock, to a
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: post Nirvana world where heavy metal judas Priest and accept
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: and like all Rainbow, all of these seventies hard rock
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: bands and Queen and Boston, all of these bands he's
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: actually aiming to emulate. He is aiming to bring back
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: their bomb bass and they are huge rock guitar walls
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: of sound and epic noss and the voice. All of
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: it is a conscious effort to bring something that had
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: been kind of lost in the eighties. It's like a
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: throwback to the seventies and he's like, the world is
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: ready to hear this again. And it's a real risk
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: because in indie rock circles, like in this Nirvana world
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: where there's pavement in Sebado and Sonic Youth, that is
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: not cool.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Right, And I mean, like, I think you kind of
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: get into what I was going to ask, which is
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: what makes his sound different from somebody like Soundgarden.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's a great question because I think in
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: Billy's mind he was thinking the same thing. I think
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: Billy had something about Soundgarden as a band in his
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: mind that he was competitive with them and wondering why
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: they got kind of more indie cred and by the way,
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: subpop band originally, then they got signed to A and M.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: But in his mind he was wondering the same thing,
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: how come I can't do what Soundgarden does. One obviously
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: distinction is that he doesn't have Chris Cornell's voice, so
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: he can't sing like Chris Cornell did. But I think
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: another thing that I thought about this a lot. I
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: think Soundgarden was able to inject a little bit of
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: a wink and a nudge of irony, which was a
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: big thing culturally in the early nineties. Sure absolutely, and
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: Kirk Cobain would do the same thing when they would
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: take a whailing guitar solo. It was a little bit
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: of a wink, wink, nudge nudge. When Billy Corgan takes
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: a guitar solo, there's no it's without guile. It's like
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: I'm swinging for the fences. I am Brian May two
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: point zero, I'm Richie Blackmore two point zero, And I
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: think to a lot of people in that moment in
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: the community, it's like, bro, that's just not cool.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: You know what's interesting about what you just said is
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking about a song like today where the lyrics
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: are really positive, but he's clearly in a bad place.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and that is a sarcastic song actually, So.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: That actually is some yeah, right, irony, sarcas, whatever you
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: want to call it. So he wasn't anti irony, but
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: I do get where like he wasn't ironic in the
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: way that some of the other bands of this era are.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: It's so perfect that you brought that song up because
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: Billy tells the story about how that song was actually
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: a turning point in his inner turmoil. And again, this song,
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: Terra barc We're gonna get very deep into it. It
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: is about this what I just described, his feelings towards
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: the hipster community, hipster's unite, as he sings, But that
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: was one of the last songs he actually wrote for
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: the album. He was still wrestling with it earlier in
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: the songwriting process for Siamese Dream. He writes today, and
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: he says how that was a moment that he was
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: able to reconcile these opposing forces of coolness and uncoolness
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: that he was feeling about his songwriting he was recognizing
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: that it just wasn't being accepted in Chicago's you Know,
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: Hipster Worlds and MTV's Hipster one hundred and twenty minutes
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: whatever they were being played. But he felt some disrespect
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: for in his way. But he says about found a
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: quote about the song today. He felt that it captured
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: his essence as these are his words a core boy
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: from fucking Chicago. He goes, I reached a point where
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: there was a direct conflict between what I was trying
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: to be and who I really was. I was trying
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: to be this person who is cool, eternally rocking, and
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: yet I was writing this dumb song Like today, I'd
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: reached a fork in the road. Do I throw this
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: in the trash and try and pursue some kind of
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: ideal that I can't live up to, or just accept
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: who I am? And in this song he does that,
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: and interestingly, to your point, he finds some irony that
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: had been maybe previously lacking from the rest of his work.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: It starts to be kind of more of a balance
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: with the bomb Bast, which is unabash hit bomb Bast
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: and a little bit of a self awareness maybe seeping
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: in about how it is perceived and he doesn't care.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: He's starting to just not care. He's letting go of
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: caring what the gatekeepers think.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: If it's possible, I want to take a step back
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: and talk about the founding of the group. Billy Co
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: founds the band in nineteen eighty eight in Chicago with
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: guitarist James Zha. Not too long after that, they recruit
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: a drummer and a bassis. Let me ask you, as
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: an expert of the band, what's the dynamic of the
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: band in these early days.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: So I think in the early days you have to
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: understand that the band Smashing Pumpkins in Billy's mind has
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: always been kind of an entity that is a band.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: But to the rest of the world, it mostly kind
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: of seems like Billy and whoever is around, because there
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: are shifting members of the band. We have Darcy on
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: bass and then she's gone in Melissa Aftermarf from Whole
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: replaces or et cetera. And Jimmy Chamberlain is in the
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: band and then he is gone and then he comes back.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: I will say, you know, this is like during a
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: period where you know, I'm listening to music constantly and
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I know what bands look like like nowadays, Like I'll
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: hear about a rapper for a full year before I
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: ever find out, Oh that's losif hurt, Like it'll take
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: me some time. But back then I knew the Smashing Pumpkins.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: It is ironic. I thought they were like one of
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: the most diverse bands of the period, Like, you know,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: you've got an Asian guy, yeah, and a cool you
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: know girl, Like they just seem like a more of
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: a mix of people than just like five or six
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: white dudes.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: My speculation I've listened to There's a lot of Billy
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: Corgan interview footage out there, and there's a lot he
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: talks about this stuff a lot over the years, and
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: I think there's some things that are consistent in some
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: things that change. So this is me speculating from what
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: I pieced together. I think he's always wanted a tribe
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: a home because he came from a broken home. His
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: parents were divorced when he was three, and he was
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: shounted off to his great grandmother and then his grandmother.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: His dad got remarried, but his stepmother was abusive and
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: his mother was not well, so he couldn't really live
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: with her. He has this looking for a home miss
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: in his childhood that really lasts his entire life until
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: recent days, where he's happily married now, so everything ended well.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: But in the band days, it seems like he's trying
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: to put together a new family, but it's difficult for
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: him to hold on to them, and he's also very controlling,
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: so he will record a lot of music and then
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: kind of replace parts and we'll be getting into that later,
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: which has the effect of pushing away these family members.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: So the bandness, I think, feels like a very carefully
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: cultivated thing to build a tribe, to build a family,
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: to be part of something. But just like the scene
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: at large that rejects him the band, he has this
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: push pull and yeah, he's back to being alone within
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: the band.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Not to mention, well, I mean.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Look good, sugarcoated. He also has a reputation for being
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: extremely hard to get along with.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, but which is the cause in which is
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: the effect? Is hard to say that that is true.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: I don't want to push that aside, but you know,
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: I have a lot of empathy for him. He has
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: such a vision, he has such a sound in mind,
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: and he's also coming from such frankly a dark place
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: that he's got a lot to express and only he
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: knows how to express it. And listen, I can speak
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: from personal experience, like without that troubled background. I also
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: know that it is tricky sometimes to like navigate between
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: like are you my collaborator? Are you the person that's
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: executing my vision? If you are, how do I make
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: you feel good about it?
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: And stay?
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: It's really tricky stuff, And the story of Smashing Pumpkins
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: is I think very much Billy wanting a family, musicians,
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: wanting to be in this tribe, and it being a
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: really tricky thing from one album to the next, from
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: one year to the next.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think what you're saying is true, And there's
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: a lot there's a lot of quotes out there that
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: back up everything you're saying. Billy's quoted in the La
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Times of saying, quote, I don't have the proper indie credentials.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: I didn't play in some seminal band where five people
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: bought the record. Yeah, oh man, he says, I wasn't
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: a roadie. That kind of rags to Rich's story. And
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: I think you actually have a quote too from Rolling Stone.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: This from nineteen ninety three.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: You know, kind of right when the song is coming out,
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: I'm like the fugitive running from the one armed indie
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: rock community. If I continued on the path I was on.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: In other words, this is this moment where he's making
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: this decision. Do I keep on trying to win the
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: approval of these people, or do I just do what
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: I want to do, which is big, bombastic rock. If
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: I continued on the path I was on, which was
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: being overly conscious and worried what the indie rock hierarchy
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: was going to think of our new album, we were
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: going to fail.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: So Billy is a thoughtful.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: Maybe overthinking person, but obviously it goes into the music,
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: and it goes into the lyrics, and it goes into
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: the song in a really big way.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: For me personally, He's an example of somebody who it's
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: almost like Morris and the Smith's like, I love that music. Yeah,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I don't have to really make my peace with the
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: man behind the curtain.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: You don't have to, I think. I Actually it's interesting
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: because I've been recently. I just listened to his more
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: recent interviews and comparing them to the old stuff, and
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: he's come a long way. But there's also some questions
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: swirling about his political affiliations, which I haven't quite landed myself.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: You know, we don't need to get into but I
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: do think that at the time, what he was dealing
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: with was, Look, there's this famous song by Pavement, right,
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: we got to talk about the Pavements song day, Let's talk.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety four, Pavement puts out a song called
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: Range Life, which includes this lyric I'll play it for
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: you and then I'll I'll read the lyric in case
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: he missed it. Smash's Nature Kids.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: They don't have no function. I don't understand what they
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: mean in Rocket Thank you fuck. We should have included
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: this in our beef episode.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: Hey you right, it's a beef trip. That's a real
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: beaf track. I mean, out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: Nature Kids, they don't have no function. I don't understand
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: what they mean, and I could really give a fuck.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: This is nineteen ninety four, Pavement being maybe the ultimate
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: like indie rock cred band, and personally speaking, I was
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: not a Pavement fan like this represented a type of
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: music I couldn't really get behind.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: At a friend, a black friend who was really into Pavement, okay,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: and and got me to you know, I would listen
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: to it when he would listen to it, but it
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: wasn't quite my thing.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: It's more lyrics driven, I mean, musically, it's not really
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: important what's happening in the music.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: It's not for saying.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: It's more than coming from like a Bob Dylan tradition.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: It's more coming from or Elliot Smith or Leonard Cohen.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: It's like the lyrics are while we're here. It's not
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: even melody matters lesson music. So I wasn't into it,
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: and Pavement was not into smashing pumpkins and smashing pumpkins,
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: and Billy, I should say, hearing this song was not
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: very happy himself. The result of this song coming out is,
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: according to legend, he told the Lollapalooz organizers that the
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: Pumpkins would pull off the bill they were going to
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: headline that year if Pavement were also on the bill.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: What So he was bitter. He was, like, this song
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: really got to got under his skin.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Never find out about your heroes. Yeah, it always stretches
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: a little petty when people pull their muscle.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Like well, so, but here's a good question. You mentioned petty.
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: Like at the time, what he said in Rolling Stone
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: was I think that this is Billy Corgan referring to
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: that lyric I displayed for you. He said at the time,
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: I think it's rooted in jealousy. It shows true pettiness
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: to your point. So who's the pettier one, the one
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: who puts the song out or the one who reacts
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: to the song about them?
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Right? I mean, I'm not even a Pavement fan. If
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: he's just being honest in the lyric, then I'm sort
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: of like cool with that.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: But I think, well, wait, if someone proud a song
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: saying Diallo really.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not gonna be like, if you ever have
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: an interview with that guy, there ain't no more one song,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: you know. I think that that's I don't love it
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: when artists do that kind of stuff, Like I think, like,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: just on to him the song, you know what I mean.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: But like you know, and Billy Corgan has a connection
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: to Courtney Love and whole as well. Can you tell
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: us what that's about?
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Yes?
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: Well, actually technically everyone knows this, but Billy Corgan was
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: first to date Courtney Love.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And famously, as he's told the story himself. I
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: think he kicked her out and then she went down
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: the street, according to the story he tells, and saw
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: a Nirvana show and started dating him. Whether it's like
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: literally the same night or whether it's a little exaggerated,
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: but like she basically went from Billy to Kurt. And
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: this maybe fuels a little bit of how Billy Corgan
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: sees the world in this moment, because Nirvana, clearly, you know,
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: is the indie Darling of nineteen ninety one and onward.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: And rightfully so, and rightfully so.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: And it should be noted that their first record, Gish,
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: was produced by Butch Vig, and it came out first.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: And guess what else Butchvig was working on in that
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: same time period.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: I can guess never Mind was released just four or
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: five months after Gish, the first Smashing Pumpkins record. So
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: Billy is feeling maybe left out of something bigger happening
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: to someone that's right next to him, which.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Big one of my favorite guys from the nineties, and
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I'm a huge Garbage fan. I think the stuff that
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: he did with a Shirley Manson the crew was outstanding.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: But Corgan is he gets back with Corney, I believe,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: and yes, he co wrote five songs with Courtney on
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Hole's album Celebrity Skin, which is one of my favorite
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: and listen, I'll admit it, I'll take the heat. I
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: think Celebrity Skin is a great album.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: No heat, I malib I love that.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: I love that song. And I actually remember exactly where
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: I was at. I was at a party the very
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: first time I heard the title track Celebrity Skin.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Oh make me out, I'm all I want to be.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: Day.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: I just forgot how much I love that sick baseline.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so also I love it, But I also hear
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: now so clearly how the guy who co wrote Celebrity
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Skin could have also written Bull of a Butterfly Wings. Yeah. Yeah,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: we're tearing up the studio. The music. The music has
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: that effect on us.
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: Can I just say this is not one of my
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: favorite songs. And part of it is because I talk
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: this go ahead I feel like and I've heard and
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: interviews him sort of allude to this corowaway this. I'm
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: pretty sure he wrote this because he thought he was
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: supposed to write it, like he was told to write
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: another hit. Not dissimilar to some of the Tara Brock
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: type anthems from Siamese Dream because it's very smashing pumpkins
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: by numbers, like right down to the part where he
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: it's just him with no music behind him.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: My rage gium still just reading a came despite my
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: rage gia still just reading a cad.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: I heard that this was the first song of the
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Melancholi sessions. Ironically, tonight, tonight, probably my favorite song was
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: written during the Siamese Dream sessions. Oh really, and he
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: just he actually, while they were touring Siamese Dream, he
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: like booked some studio time and had the band go
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: in and actually record that song while he had all
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: these ideas running through his head. But I believe that
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Bullet is the first from Melancholy, and the last from
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Melancholy is nineteen seventy nine. And then it almost didn't
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: make the album. But when I think it's the producer
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: known as Flood told him, hey, I don't know about
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: this nineteen seventy nine. It doesn't sound like you guys.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: You should leave it off that He saw that as
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: a challenge and went back into the studio for four
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: more hours worked on nineteen seventy nine, and then when
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: flood hurt. The next morning, he was like, uh, yeah,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: I was wrong. You should put this on the album.
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: Ninety kids.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: Great song. It is in my like B list of favorites.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: I don't dislike it, but again, as a Jimmy Chamberlain fan, yeah,
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: as a fan of the drums in this band as
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: much as the guitar, it's a little bit like, Man,
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: I wish they'd let us rip.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: On nineteen seventy nine. And I know that we have
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of listeners, you know. I talked to folks
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: and when I told them we were doing Smash Republicans,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of them were like, nineteen seventy nine, Listen,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: we love that song. I do think that we just
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: wanted to do something that felt a little bit more
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: like the band's signature sound. But like nobody's taking anything
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: away from it. And by the way, it's their number
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: one song, so oh yeah, you know.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: We understandable that you'd want us to break it down.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: Yes, but we want to talk about cherub Rock. So
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: cherub Rock is on the Smashing Pumpkins' second album, Siamese Dream,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: released in July of nineteen ninety three. It was their
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: first single off the album, and that's only because Billy
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: fought the label hard for it to be the first single.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: That's right. For purely commercial reasons, this might have been
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: one of the times that lay was right because they
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: wanted the first single to be Today. Today turned out
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: to be the second single, and Today is the single
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: that broke the band big. But the album Siamese Dream
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: is a wonderful picture of the band at that moment.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's so much going on. Corgan is depressed
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: and suffering from writer's block. You've got things happening within
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: the band, like James eh and Darcy are in and
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: out of a romantic relationship, Jimmy Chamberlain is battling a
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: heroin addiction, and the whole band is just there's a
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: lot of infighting going on.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: And in Billy's own words, this is an interview who
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: gave a few years later. He said, this is referring
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: to the moment where they went into the studio for
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: Siamese Dream. They had just come off this tour for
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: a gish selling out everywhere we go. Everything was cool, fine, dandy.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: Then in his words, suddenly, boom Nirvana. We went from
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: being seen as future stars almost to has beens. People
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: were saying, well, if you were so good, this would
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: have happened to you. So Billy is in a deep depression.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: As he said in another interview, I was suicidal plotting
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: my own death for about two months. Everything you said
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: about the breakups and the heroine, this is a dark,
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: dark moment with a lot of pressure and a lot
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: of confusion. We alluded to the breakthrough, so we've already
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: kind of with the song today. So he breaks through
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: and then these songs get written in the album is amazing,
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: but in this moment before they get started on this
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: very long drawn out process, they're in the studio for
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: three or four months with like twelve fourteen hour days.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: It's a difficult album to make, and but a lot
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: of great art comes out of challenging times.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: That's all true. And listen, after the break we will
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: dive into how the song Chaeri Brock was actually made
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: and does this song feature James Zha Darcy and Jimmy
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Chamberlain or not. Stay tuned for the answer after this
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: welcome back to one song Luxury walk us through cher
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Brock tell us how did this song get made? Well?
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: As we mentioned, this is the signs stream sessions. It's
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: it's circa nineteen ninety three and we are in Atlanta
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: with the band this fashion Pumpkins, and the band is
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: there together. It's all four members. It's Butch Vig who
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: is the producer. And yeah, I mean you can watch
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: some great old interview footage where there they are very bored.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: These are long days. They are tracking guitars like there.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: Some songs have like forty guitars in them, like stacks
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: and stacks. They are rehearsing, They're getting many takes of
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: Jimmy Chamberlain playing drums. It seems very grueling. It seems
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: like this record was a very long, laborious labor of love,
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: but laborious.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Nevertheless, it almost seems like Billy Corgan brings you into
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: his family and then torture. Shit.
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: Maybe maybe it's a little bit of a shadow of
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: what he experienced himself.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: So this song, though, to be clear, is it's a
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: one hundred percent Billy Corgan composition, And as we go
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: through the instruments, we'll talk about who actually was performing
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: these parts because it might be a little surprising. So interestingly,
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: Billy wrote this song pretty quickly. He says, I wrote
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: Tara Brock and half an hour. I heard it one
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: day while I was driving up the road. It was
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: one of the last songs I wrote before we did
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: the album. The thing is, there's parts of me that
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: wonder what would have happened if I spent four hours
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: writing it and not done something else. So it's interesting
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: his dichotomy between like being somebody who spends hours and
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: hours and hours like tracking guitars one at a time
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: and getting that perfect sound, but his songwriting process, it
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: sounds like he really quick, aims to be quick. The
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: quicker the better. Yeah, it is the first song. It
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: opens the album, and it's a pretty epic tune starting
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: with and kind of based around Jimmy Chamberlain's ridiculously cool
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: drum part. So he might be my favorite living drummer,
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: and he is a powerful rock drummer, but he's got
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: this incredibly light touch. So he's his influences when he
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: talks about them, and some great interviews out there, he's
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: always mentioning like Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. You know,
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: I can see that John Bottom's in the mix too,
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: But like Jazz is a huge part as a drummer.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: You can tell, you can tell by his versatility. Yeah,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: and some of the and some of the fills that
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: he used, you could totally see that being like, you know,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: like and now playing with Paul white Man, here comes
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Chamblin.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: Well, without further ado, let's listen to some of the
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: isolated drum tracks from Chera Brock. First, I'll play the part,
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: and then I will play where it comes from, and
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: then he gets a little more intense and it does
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: the same thing but louder, and he does that Jon
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: Bonamy kind of fill there. And Billy Corgan has gone
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: on the record with how he was inspired for that
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: part by this that is by Tor and the snow
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: Dog by Rush from their nineteen seventy five album fly
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: by Night. So I'll just play for you Chera Brock
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: again with the guitars, so you can you know, having
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: heard Rush, you'll hear the entire piece. Now listen, just
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: the fact that Billy Corgan is referencing Rush, who might
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: be the like in nineteen ninety three ninety two, especially
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: the least cool band for this group of like his
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: cohort of Pavement and Nirvana. This is a band that
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: mud Honey used as an insult against their labelmate Soundgarden, saying,
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: you guys sound like Rush, Like it's the worst thing
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: you can say to anybody. And yet everyone secretly, especially
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: the drummers in this world, love Rush because Rush is
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: one of the great musical bands, and from a drummer's perspective,
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: Neil Peert is one of the greatest living well at
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: the time living drummers sadly passed away recently. But anyway,
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: I think it's quite funny that there's a rush. It's
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: not quite an interpolation, but so really cool connection there
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: and a funny one little tongue in cheek. This is
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: part and parcel of the song's DNA, which is about hey,
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: screw you gatekeepers, Hey screw you hipper than thou hipsters,
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: and which is a word that literally he uses in
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: the song. We'll be hearing shortly, so there's that bold
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: Rush reference, and then we have a little more Jimmy
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: Chamberlain love to deliver. Let's hear some more of what
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: he does in this song. He describes what he's doing
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: as a conversation between the high hat and the ride,
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: and there's all these ghost notes like the way he
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: thinks about how to make a drum part to me
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: is so it's so musical, and so it's about supporting
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: the song and it's just a beautiful thing to listen to.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: And let's start adding stuff back in.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: So you can hear it in the context of the song.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: The lightness of touch is what I keep coming back to.
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: How he manages to be heavy and strong and forceful
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: and authoritative as a drummer, and yet there's like lightness
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: going on. There's like an airiness to the hyats being
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: a little open, and the ghost.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: Notes on the snare.
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: I don't know, man, just my drummer brain gets so
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: turned on by everything he does, so inspired by it. Absolutely,
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: And here's the huhy part. So I'll play that for you.
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: Then I'll add some instruments back in. There's another one
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: of my favorite moments.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: It's funny because.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: I like that a lot. Well, yeah, what do you
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: like about that?
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'll play with some context and let's get
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: into it. I have, by the way, spent many hours
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: of my life playing along to this record, just air
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: jarming along to it, so I know where every little moment,
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: every fill is and if I were to try and
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: sit down and it, you'd be like, that does not
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: sound like Jimmy Chamberlin. You are playing the parts, but
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: you are not playing them the way he does it,
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: which is very interesting. This is just a snare fill.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: And look, we've come off of an episode recently where
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: we were talking about the Tears for Fears. I mean,
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: it's a drum machine. But by contrast, where because it's
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: a drum machine, the sound is the same, it's just
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: a little bit louder. When the film comes in dot
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: dot dot do at the beginning, I've head over yells
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: here is by this is the opposite of that. This
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: is a great drummer who's carefully selected his snare and
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: the snareheaded, the miking and everything, and the way he
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: plays this snare fill is extraordinarily artful and specific. It's
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: just a little moment, but it's got so much sauce
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: in it.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it definitely asks to the emotion of the song.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, this is kind of a similar moment. This
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: is I'll add in the vocals so you can hear
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: where this is.
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: Li. So so what's interesting, and it's relevant to this point
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: is that in the studio.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: I'm already kind of given the secret away. But the
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: band performs as a unit of four. They lay down
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: the drum tracks. That's how this record was made. Jimmy
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: Chamberlain needed understandably for their to feel like a band,
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: So they all performed all the songs together, and then
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: they erased all the musical parts that weren't the drums,
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: and then Billy went in and re recorded those parts.
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: But while this was happening, Jimmy Chamberlain's musical drumming brain
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: is hearing what is happening in every instrument and reacting
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: to it in a way that only a drummer of
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: his caliber can because all the little subtleties of when
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: what the vocals are doing rhythmically, and it is enhancing
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: them in some ways, giving them space to shine, in
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: other ways duplicating the same rhythm maybe. So all of
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: these choices are so part of what makes him a
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: very incredible and artful drummer.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Absolutely and specifically a rock drummer. You know, because I
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: think that you know, we've talked about on the show.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: My earliest appreciation for drums was Animal from the Muppet Chef,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: and then from the beatles, and then I got into ato'
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: eights and drum machines. It's interesting because hearing you talk
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: about the emotion of these drums, that occurs to me.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Most of my drum appreciation, even as a drummer myself,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: came from the effect that it gave you. You know what
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, and you know, not to beat a dead horse,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: but I think that when the drum pattern changes a lot,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: you know, that's something I get really excited about, you know.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: But then again I like that bunk and a lot
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: of times their songs are for.
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: Hey, they're both satisfying in different ways. Sometimes there's like
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: a one bar loop or a half bar loop in
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: daft punk.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: Or a two bar loop.
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: The satisfaction comes from it being repetitious and it kind.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: Of a drone can put you in a train, a trance.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say, it's it's almost you know, to
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: go back to the Black Church. Like. Part of the
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: reason those songs are always like that wasnotic. They're trying
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: to whip you up in song.
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: And then by contrast this song, by the way, it's
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: not only is the drum part changing from moment to moment,
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: because the human drummer Jimmy Chamberlin is playing it, but
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: also the tempo's kind of rushing and slowing down. Suddenly
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: there's no click track in this. This is played to
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: Jimmy's internal metronome, which during the song kind of gets
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: a little faster and then slows.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Out a little bit. Jimmy's internal metrono, and also Billy's
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: emotional state given where he is in the song, whether
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: he's on the verse or whether he's on the chorus.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: H you know, I love the bass in this Songea,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: and I feel like there's a story here because the
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: basis is usually darcy, is it not.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in the early nineties there's this phenomenon of like
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: the female bass player and in otherwise male band. You've
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: got like Kim Dial and the Pixies. You've got another
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: Kim Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth. We had Debbie Googe
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: in My Bloody Valentine was one of two. We have
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: Tina from the Talking Heads. There this sort of legacy
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: of like.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: The game was one of my favorite right right.
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: I think that Billy was kind of wanting that visually,
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: but in the studio he didn't need it so much.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: I don't know that Darcy was really giving him what
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: he needed. Jimmy has explicitly talked about how Darcy's rhythm
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: wasn't really working for him as a drummer. She was
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: a little Nike not where he was in terms of
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: the beat. So they performed in order to get Jimmy's
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: drums down. But then the bass was erased. The Darcy
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: Retzki take was erased, and Billy went in and this
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: is what he played. And just one more thing on
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: this issue, Like Billy, like he does with so many
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: things we've we have learned on this episode, wrestled a
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: lot with the decision to replace the bass parts, and
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: in fact, in later years he expressed regret over what
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: he did by taking them off the track. He said, look,
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: musicianship and technical vision are finding good, but at some
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: point you cross the line. No matter how good numb
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: you got, you got, you cut away the gut of
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: your band. And he has really rustled over the years
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: with like how to make these other members of the
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: band feel like they're in a band and not the
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: Billy Corgan experience. And I think he's really got a
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: dynamic of like he wants to control the sound he
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: wants to control everything, but he doesn't want to control
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: everything and does it's a real push pull.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: With him through the entire career of the band.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because Darcy wasn't happy.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Well, listen, we like this band. Yes, every story that
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: we're hearing makes it sound like it's really hard to
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: work with Billy Cory. Yeah. I think, and we can
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: probably imagine why James and Darcy and Jimmy why why
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: the band does eventually wrote.
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: Their own They come and go and actually James, both
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: James and Jimmy are back in the current touring.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, iteration of it's like, okay, well, you know, we're
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: not under any illusion of who this guy is and
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: he has great ideas.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they know their place. They aren't considered I hope,
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: I mean your place. I mean, look, the facts are
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: the facts, and they aren't songwriters, so they're not making
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: the untold millions that Billy has made on the publishing.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: It's tough when one guy has all the publishing and
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: is making a mass sum of money and you're more
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: than the right. Can we go out on tour because
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind like paying the rent, Like that's not
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: to say anybody in this band is suffering like that,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: but like still, I think we can understand where that
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: makes conversations awkward.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it does.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: There is a power and balance, let's just put it
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: that way. Billy kind of holds all the cards in
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: terms of what happens with this band. But he has
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: been loyal and loyalty. He's talked on the Howard Stern
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: Show about how loyalty coming from this broken background, how
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: in him trying to create this family. He does place
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: a lot of importance on being loyal and having loyalty
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: and the fact that he is currently literally on tour
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: as we make this episode with James and Jimmy again,
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: he is really trying to keep this family team now
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: with Darcy. Darcy unfortunately is out of the picture. Okay, Yeah,
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: there have been some leaked text messages that you know,
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: it sounds like she's a little bit in a difficult
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: spot recently in her life. But I think Billy has
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: tried to make it work, and for various reasons, it didn't.
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: But we do love you, Darcy.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: If you're out there, yeah, and if you want to
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: give your side of the story, call us tell me
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: about the guitarist because they are such a part of
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: the signature Smashing Pumpkins.
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: Sound absolutely, my friend. Well let's see, let's start with
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: the pumpkin chord. The song begins with this big wall
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: of guitars and then on the top of it. This
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: is a big part of the sound of this band
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: is you will frequently have a big wall of sound,
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: maybe riffing, and then melodically on top there's something that
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: almost sounds Indian. It almost has this raga feel to it,
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: and it's it sounds well.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: In fact, it's.
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: Funny you should say that because Billy has talked about
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: how he wants to did this experiment where he played
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: Black Sabbath in the one room and Rabbi Shankhar in
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: the other room, and that actually is a perfect metaphor
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: or an analogy, whatever the right word is for for
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: the sound of the Pumpkins. They have this big riffy
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: underpinning and then on top of it this beautiful melodic
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: sound which is coming from basically playing an oc the
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: same note as an octave up and down the fret
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: and that's what we're about to hear. He calls it
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: the pumpkin chord, but he's borrowed it from Jimmy Hendrix,
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: and I'll play after I play this, I'll play the
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: Jimmy Hendrix song that I think he was thinking of.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: And what I'm specifically referring to is that duh. So
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: that's a melody, but he's playing it on the octave,
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: so it's two notes of the melody, one lower, one higher,
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: and it just thickens up the sound and again creates
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: this kind of Indian raga feel mixed with I mean,
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: I think that's what Hendrix is doing, and I'll say
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: that sounds very.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: I can definitely hear the Jimmy Hendrix influence on that
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: once you isolate it.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: So this Jimmy Hendrix song uses that same way of
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: creating the melody.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: It's not uncommon.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: In fact, both Billy corgan And says we got this
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: from Hendrix, but he probably got it from West Montgomery.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: It's a thing you do on guitar, but it's also
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: a very distinctive sound, and here's a song where.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Jimy Hendrix uses it. So Jimmy's doing the same thing.
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: He's got the octave and he's playing the melody, but
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: it's got a thicker tone and it's got a little Indiana.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Who would have thought that Wes Montgomery was the link
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: between Jimmy Hendrix smashing pumpkins and Doja Cat So so cool,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: kind of crazy, so cool.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: That was Third Stone from the Sun, by the way,
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: from are you experiencing?
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, give us more guitars.
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: So, like I said before, this record has some insane overdubs.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: One of the tricks of recording and mixing a big
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: stack of guitars is you've got to find room for
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: all of them where they just become this big mess,
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: this big They're all in the same frequency range, so
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: you have to cut the frequencies and do this and
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: do that. So many many hours in the pre pro
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: tool era went into doing that for this result, which
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: I think was worth it because it arguably changed the
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: sound of alternative radio. I mean, that just does something
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: to my serotonin.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: It's great. I'm gonna do something that, uh, some of
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: our listeners, it sounds a lot like this to me.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: I want to fly away, Yeah, yeah.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: I look, you can.
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: Sim Look, I'm just gonna say this riff riffing, riff,
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: rock like crunchy guitars that have catchy riffs, meaning the
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: guitar is playing a figure, like a kind of a
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: melodic figure that you walk away humming.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: I think that jim this goes back to Jimmy. It
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: goes back so like the Kinks. I would say, right around, yeah.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: But specifically play the part you just played again, just
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: right before I played the Lenny, just play that part.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: Oh oh oh yeah. I mean like I'm just saying
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: that I think that Lenny. I'm not saying he stolen guys.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm so scared. But I do think that,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: like there's just I think everybody to a certain extent
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: is chasing Jimmy when I hear that fuzzy guitar that
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: you can like totally hum along to. And I don't
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: know that I give it. I don't know if I
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: love the Kings. I don't know if I hear that.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: When I hear the Kings, I definitely hear that. When
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: I hear Jimmy, I hear what you're hearing. I think
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: in part there's some shared chords going on there. These
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: are Circle of fifth CE chords going on. They're in
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: a slightly different order. And if you add to.
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: That the sound of the guitar, Yeah, fuzz guitar, and
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: then maybe there's maybe a rhythmically similar thing, although I
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: think the Lenny's a little faster.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Look.
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: All of these things evoke a similar I would say
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: shared source. I was a shared group of sources, which
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: is they have some shared records in their collection. I'm
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: sure Lenny, they both have late Beatles records.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: They both have King the nineties guys, So there's still
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: retro happening in the nineties. I do feel like in
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: the nineties a lot of groups were going back to
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: the bands in the sixties quite a bit.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: Well, Lenny certainly is one of those guys, right.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Well for sure, And like you said, Billy's going back
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: and listening to old bands. I think you know, they're
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: all listening to old bands in the nineties in ways
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: that I think crime bands are not listening to bands
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: in the sixties. So you know, by the way, the
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: sixties was really having a moment because the Beatles have
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: the anthology CD comes out with Free as a Bird
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: and some new material. Austin Powers is in theaters. I
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: just feel like even some of those garbage songs, they
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: were like redoing can't seem to make you mine. By
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: the seeds, you know, garage, Yeah, garage and fuzzy sort
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: of like want to be Jimmy. All that stuff was
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: really back in the night.
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: Well, you're right to make that connection, because besides the
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: Jimmy Hendricks chord I, the prior record Gish was very visually,
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: certainly and even sonically, there's a lot of psychedelia coming
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: into them.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: To play there.
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And funny that you mentioned it too, because in
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: the solo which I'll play it for you now, Billy
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: in the liner notes talks about how part of the
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: influence for this was a different sixties song, and I'll
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: I'll play you the solo first and then I'll play
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: you what he alludes to being where he got some
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: of the idea for the solo, which, by the way,
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: this guitar solo at one point ranked number ninety seven
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: and Guitar World's list of the one hundred greatest guitar
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: solos of all Time.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: So, without further ado, let's play it.
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's only that's part one of the two
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: part solo. But like right there, there are some crazy
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: sounds going on.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: So cool.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: So reading from the liner notes in the twenty eleven
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: to share this record, Billy says, quote the solo is
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: uncorked down from the gentle glades of Itchi Coop Park.
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: So this is his wink and nudge to those of
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: us who know the Small Faces. He's talking about this
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: moment from this song. This is Small Faces, Itchy Coop Park,
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: nineteen sixty seven. And listen to the sound he's I
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: think referring to the flange sound, which at the time
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: was unusual.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: This, I mean that had to blow your brain if
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: you were listening to that, you know, smoking pot, yeah,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: smoking grass in nineteen sixty seven.
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: I still the sound of us a flange is still
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: so exciting to me.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: Like the surly run filter. Yeah, you know, like these
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: are all These are also of my favorite.
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: Things because we love to play the parts that you
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: wouldn't notice necessarily in the mix. I've got a few
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: of those really delicious things in the guitars, just a
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: couple of quick things. I never noticed this until I
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: was in the stems. But right after that guitar solo
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: a little after, we get this sexy moment, and basically
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: what that's doing is it's echoing the let me out.
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: So I'll play it in the mix, right around the guitar.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: Let me.
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: So that guitar is kind of echoing the let me
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: out another little delicious detail that you will forever hear
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: when you listen to the song from now on, that
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: little like it almost there's another Jimi Hendri's thing by
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: the way that sounds like the beginning of Purple Haze.
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: I think, yeah, so those are just some really fun
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: guitar sounds. Again, they spent many, many hours coming up
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: with different sounds and tracking layers and layers of guitars, layers,
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: layers and layers.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Would you say were the number of layers? There was
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: like sixty layers.
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: Well, they're up to forty on some song. I don't
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: know how many were on this song, but I hear
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: lots and lots.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Of Obviously, it would not be Smashing Pumpkins without the
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: vocals of a certain Billy.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: Corgan William Patrick Corgan.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: What can you play us from Billy's vocals that will
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: ignite and excite.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: This Let's start from the top, freak.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: O, giv him, doesn't matter what you buy, Lead him
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: now what's going on there? Because I think what I
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: hear is, you know there's one layer where it's just
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: him singing it, yeah, kind of like this and the
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: like it's just whispers, right.
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: That could be, that could be. I don't have it separated,
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: but I'm hearing what you're hearing. There are definitely some layers.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: There's some layering going on, and he.
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: Talks about how he likes like Ozzy's doubling technique has
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: a very distinct That was.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: Gonna be my question, like, because even if he's not
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: copying somebody, there's obviously like sort of like an approach
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: of a previous artist who he's like, Oh, let's let's
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: do it in that style.
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And doubling is definitely a common thing across the board.
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: But I think he specifically liked the way that the
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: Ozzie vocals were doubled. And I think I hear some
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: of that in there.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: Mental wounds, not.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: Like a bit shame I'm going after on a crazy tray.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: So Billy likes Ozzy and Jimmy. He likes he likes Jimmy, Ozzy,
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: Jimmy and Billy.
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: And you can hear him like his singing style is.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: Of course, he's got kind of two modes. I don't
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: think I think he would agree with my assessment that
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: he's not necessarily a technical singer, as he said, as
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier, he's not.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: Chris now to him, but that I said, you're probably
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: dead to him. Honestly, let's keep going.
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: Let's assume that.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: But yeah, you're right, there's another that's like the sort
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: of like verse Billy and then there's the chorus.
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: But who goes a loud Yeah, like that was a
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: perfect imitation. Billy's singing style is I think perfect for
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: this band, not Chris Cornell. It is probably a good
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: thing that he has, like an imperfect voice, like it's
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: he is straining and he's breathy, and these are characteristics
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: of his personality and it works.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: It works for the band.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: It's one of those things where if you've got the
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: most technically proficient, amazing singer.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: We always use Shaka Khan as an example.
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: Chaka Khan and Smashing Pumpkins would be a completely different band.
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: It wouldn't have the personality of Billy.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: Corgan, Billy Corgan, Anthony Keatus like some of these people,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: well Anthony Keats in particular. I feel like anybody can
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: sing pretty much, but that's sort of what makes him
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: endearing to the.
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: Daring is a good word.
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very approachable, Like this isn't something we couldn't
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: all do ourselves.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: But that's when we're billy vocals. This is fun.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: Well, here's that chorus we were talking about.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: Else.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: It's a very distinctive sing.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: I like how you went like minor there, like you know,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: the harmonizing, Yeah, you know, definitely gave you that sort
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: of like that, that that fun and dark appeal.
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and there's layering. You can tell that there's
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: a low octave and a high octave he's doing in there.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: I love the way it all comes together.
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: It all comes together. This is that's that's the magic
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: of music like this. When you hear a vocal isolated
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: like that, you're like, I'm not sure what this is
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: attached to, but it works with those major guitars and
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: jimmy and drums. This is a perfect match of all
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: these sounds. Look, let me play for you. This is
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: one of my favorite lines that probably hooked me into
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: the song because in the moment it was happening. And then,
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: as I mentioned later on in life, this like battle
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: for the gatekeepers versus me, Like the gatekeepers aren't accepting me,
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: what's going on?
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: This is the line you come alive for the big fat.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: By the way, hipster's was not it doesn't mean what
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: it means today. Like I feel like post two thousand
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: and three electro clash, like hipster became ironically so big
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: of a question thing like that you I wanted to
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: be and you know, but I think by the nineties,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: I feel like hipster was definitely pretty much uniformly Padora.
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: Well, it's funny you said that too, because the word
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: hipster to me, I first heard around this time when
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: I visited my friend at University of Chicago, who himself
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: was telling me about how the scene in that area was,
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: like there's a suppressive scene. There's a band called Urge Overkill,
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: one of my favorites, and they were the absolute cool kids.
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: And as you as fans of music of that era
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: may remember, Liz Fair did her exile on Guyville album
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: about the hipsters of Chicago, and my understanding from the
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: inside was that Urge Overkill was part of this group
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: that she was railing against on this album, and the
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: word hipster came into my vocabulary in Chicago. So it's
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: just interesting to like listen back and be like, you're
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: right in nineteen ninety one, who hipster.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: Words don't mean the same as it would have meant
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and five or even twenty twenty five.
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: It's music scenesters who are opinionated and judge and keeping
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: it down.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: There's an orthodox kill and everybody, everybody in the music
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: scene is judgy, like these guys think these guys are
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: too pommon, these guys think these guys are underground and
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: can't sell five records. So everybody's kind of pointing that
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: that's spider Man.
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: But roc Ha is this real, real lineage of orthodoxy,
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: Like like I should say, post sex pistols, punk rocks
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: started to codify there are rules you can do this
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: but not that, and then there's little scenes like the
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: DC scene and the like.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: There's like a million subgenres.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's a lot of rules.
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: And I think Billy was like, I don't know these
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: rules and I'm just making the music.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: That I like.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Being judge too.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: He's judging about the judgers, though.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: I love your Billy defenses. But the more you talk
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: about and the more I'm like, no, He's kind of
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: It's like that thing where like you reil against corruption,
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: and then you join the system, and then you too
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: become corrupt. But that is neither here nor there.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: I hear what you're saying, and you're right. You're giving
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: me something to chew on. And that's what I appreciate
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: you and our friendship.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: That's why we do the show. I mean, that is
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: so important to defining the Smashing Pumpkins sound. Well. Look,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: this band has been super successful. Their songs have been
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: used in many movies and TV shows, including the HBO
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: series Girls, which used today and the End is the
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Beginning is the End, which was in the I think
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: you know essential Batman movie Batman and Robin from nineteen
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: ninety three favorite Batman shut Out to Clooney. It was
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: also featured in Guitar Hero three, right.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: Which is a big thing because you know, these video
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: games introduce a new audience to the band to the song.
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, just speaking really quickly about visuals
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: in the band, I don't think you can talk about
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: Smashing Pumpkins without talking about out their music video.
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, some great Their music videos are.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Outstanding, And I just want to call to from roughly
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: this period forward. First off nineteen seventy nine, I think
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: one of the most beautiful lyrical music videos.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: He was literally like nostalgic. Yeah, it's nostalgic, and they're
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: supposed to be driving around like suburban Chicago, and yet
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: you can see the Hollywood Hills in the background, so
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: like it's that classic thing where people try to shoot
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: la for somewhere else. And of course Billy's in the
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: backseat of the car and the other members of the
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: band show up in various scenes. But I want to
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: pay special attention to Tonight Tonight because this video had
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: a huge effect on me. Ever, the directors of both
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine and Tonight Tonight are Jonathan Daton and
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: Valerie Faris. They were on Misters Show with Bob and David,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite shows of all time. They direct,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: you know, amazing material to this day. And also the
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: puppetry in Tonight Tonight is by a guy named Wayne White,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: and he is a genius. He won three Emmys for
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: his work on both the set and the puppets of
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: wait for it, Peewee's Playhouse, which, if you know anything
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: about me, there are a few pieces of art of
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: any kind that mean more to me than Pee Wee's playoffs.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, Paul Rubins, rest in peace. You are a sweet,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: sweet soul Tonight tonight. You know, when they saw the
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: album art for Melancholy, Daanan and Ferris were like, why
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: don't we make this video the way that they made
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: early silent films. So that's why it looks the way
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: it does. And it's in my top three, And I
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: don't even know what else is in my top three,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: but this video is in my top three. And they
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: shot at like those early silent films, And if you
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: think about those early silent films being made, like these
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: are the earliest moving pictures, that's like the beginning of
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: the nineteen hundreds. This video comes out at the end
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: essentially the nineteen hundreds. So it's a perfect bookend in
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: some ways of what pop culture you know, starts off
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: as at the beginning of the century and where it
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: ends up at the end of the century. It's just
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: an amazing video. And I'd even say just as like
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: a writer and just as a human, like it's such
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: an emotional song, Like you know, it starts silent, it
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: flares up and then you've got lyrics like we'll crucify
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: the insincere tonight, you know, the indescribable moments of our
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: life Tonight, the impossible is possible tonight.
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: Like it's such a perfect opener for an album, for
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: a double album experience. It's like welcome to it like
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: a stage, welcome to our show, welcome to our play.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: A little bit right, It's just one of those songs
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: where you know if I'm in the right mood, and
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: that song starts off and those soaring strings, just everything
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: in that song just worked really right for me. So
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: I would be remiss if we did an episode about
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: Smashing Pumpkins where I didn't mention that song, those lyrics,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: which I think is just wonderful, like where you believe
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: is the legacy of Chera Brock and the Smashing Pumpkins.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: Look for me, Chara Brock was and the Smashing Pumpkins
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: and Siamese Dream this record in this moment, it's really
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: important to me personally for all the reasons we talked
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: about today. It made an impression on me that this
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: person wanted to make a sound, even if it wasn't
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: the cool sound of the moment. That's a great message
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: and I hope that resonates to this day. Obviously the
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: landscape has changed in the music industry, but I think
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: this idea of like you have an idea in your head,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: but you're not sure if it's cool, that's pretty universal.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: That feels pretty timeless. So when I think about this record,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: there's the sonics of it, which these big guitars always
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: been talking about the sound of Billy Corgan, the band itself,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: and their legacy. That's obviously a big part of this song,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: and it's to answer your question, it's legacy. But I
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: also think this message is a really interesting one, and
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: part of why I wanted to do the song was
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: to remind people of the what Billy.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: Was trying to say.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: Look, I think the line beware all those angels with
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: their wings glued on, he's just talking about how like
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: you think that this is going to change your life
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: if you cowtow to what people want you to do,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: but it really won't. Look what's inside and do what's
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: true to you. So I think that message still resonates
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: for me.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: I like that a lot. Okay, Luxury it Stein for
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: one more song. This is the segment where we share
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: a deep cut or a hidden gym with You, the
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: one Song Nation, and with each Other. Today, I'm going
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: to go first and my one more song is SR
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: Smoothies Inside of You. This is a song I used
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: to play often, and unfortunately I don't think that it's
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: one of those songs that's made the transition from vinyl
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: and CDs to MP three, so you might have to
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: go digging for it. But it's called inside of You
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: parentheses OGU twenty forty remix. I found it on YouTube,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: this SR Smoothie inside of You.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: Johnson.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: It's got a very slow build, but trust me, by
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: the time you get to the end, you'll be like, oh,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: I know why he chose that song. And it also
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: has a lot of cool drum changes that come in
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: as well.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: Awesome for my one more song, I'm just thinking about
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: Rush and I'm thinking about Billy Corgan in the like
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: late seventies, early eighties. I'm just picturing the man listening
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: to this song thinking about his alienation, because this song
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: moved me when I was a young, alienated.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: Disaffected youth.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: It's subdivisions from Signals nineteen eighty two, classic song about
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: being lonely as a kid. Be cool or be cast out?
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: You know that message really resonates when you're thirteen.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: Everybody really corgan who also taps into that part of
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: our brain will crucify the insincere tonight. As always, if
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: you have a song you want to suggest for one
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: more song, you can find us on TikTok or Instagram.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: You can find me on TikTok at d'allo riddle or
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: on Instagram at Diallo. That's right on Instagram at Dallo.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: And I am Luxury.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: On TikTok that's luxx ry xx and Instagram you can
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: find me just the luxx ry part.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: You don't need to add the xx at the end.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: You can also find us on YouTube these days and
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: search one song podcast on YouTube and you can see
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: our lovely faces as well as like some visual clips
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: to go along with.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: These complete episodes.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if you like the podcast, go rewatch it with
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: looking at Us this time. Yeah, the entire episodes, And
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: if you've made it this far, I think that means
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: you like the podcast, So please do not forget to
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: give us five stars, leave a review and share with
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: someone you think might like the show, because it really
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: helps keep it going.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: All right, Luxury help us in.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: This thing, well, I'm producer, DJ and songwriter and music
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: cologist Luxury.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: And I'm active writer to writers sometimes DJ d'allow.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: And this is one song I'll see you next time.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Jonasanti, with engineering from Marcus Ham.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Additional production support from Casey Simonson and Abou Kamara. The
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Steine, Bryan Smiley,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: Eric Eddings, Eric Wild, and Leslie want