Alt-Enemies: Smashing Pumpkins vs. Pavement

In 1994, Stephen Malkmus of Pavement wrote a snarky song called "'Range Life" in which he made a few snide remarks about one of the world's most popular alternative rock bands, Smashing Pumpkins. Little did he know that this song would spark a rivalry that would last for decades. Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan interpreted "Range Life" as yet another example of "elite" people looking down on him, a worldview that has curdled over time in strange and unexpected ways. In the end, Corgan's ire for Malkmus is a parable about how assuming the world is against you is a good way to turn the world against you.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Rivals is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to Rivals, the show about music feuds, beefs,
and long swimming resentments between musicians. I'm Steve and I'm
Jordan's and we have a very highly requested rivalry today,

(00:22):
which is funny because it's one of the tamer feuds
really when you think about it. You know, there are
some feuds where blood is shed, lawsuits are filed, and
teenage daughters are mentioned in really ungallant ways, But this
is not one of those feuds. I would argue this
is probably one of the most passive feuds we ever
have done. What do you thank Stephen? Yeah, this was
a big one for me growing up, although I feel
like it might be difficult to explain to future generations.
By the way, we're talking about Smashing Pumpkins versus Pavement,

(00:46):
a battle of nineties indie rock versus nineties alternative rock,
which I feel like if you're under the age of thirty,
you would just use those terms interchangeably. Like it's hard
to understand like why these bands were even eating, because
I feel like if you like one of these bands now,
you probably like the other one. But back in the nineties,

(01:07):
there was this idea of selling out Jordan's where you
didn't want to be a sellout. You wanted to be
someone who didn't sell out. And this caused a lot
of consternation between different bands back then. And you could
say that this rivalry signifies that debate better than any other.
Without further ado, let's dive into this mess. It all

(01:32):
starts with William Patrick Corrigan Jr. And you know, if
Abe Frohman is the sausage King of Chicago, then Billy
Corgan is the resentment King of Chicago. Yes, he's a
resentment sausage. He's just he's one of the biggest try
hards in rock, which is you know, I say that
like it's a bad thing, and it's not. It's actually
something that really endears him to me. And he's resentful

(01:53):
and he's got his reasons. He's resentful because it's a
strange dad who's a really talented musician. He played with
bands like Rufus and I think he was offered Ted
Nugent Spot and the Amboy Dukes. Um really talented guy.
He never gave young Billy at the time of day
as a kid, never really fostered his his musical talent
and encouraged him in the way that he could have.
So he's usually full of that bad dads were bad
dads were endemic to nineties rock. They existed everywhere in nineties.

(02:17):
If you had a bad dad, you could get a
record deal in the nineteen nineties. That's how That's how
many bad dads there were, and they never really thought
of that. You're right. I mean, he's resentful of his dad.
That's that's that's the bed rock. He's resentful of all
the coastal bands that he thinks looks down on him
because he's from the Midwest, from Chicago. He resents sort
of the good looking rock gods like Chris Cornell and
Eddie Vetter, and even the sort of complex relationship with

(02:39):
the late Kurt Cobain, who he sings in Heavy Metal Machine.
If I were dead with my record cell, I always
thought he was kind of this weird little dance with
with sort of a ghost of Kurt. And then he
has more active Fuge two with Steve Albini and Kim Gordon,
but for our intensive purposes in this episode, he resents
the effortless California cool of Stephen Malcolmus. And the blend
of not only critical acclaim but underground cred he can

(03:01):
enjoy as a member of Pavement. And for Billy, this
just takes him right back to being the young cool
kid in high school and he's in his room learning
Black Sabbath riffs. It's it's really hard on him. And
that's just I think the tragedy of Billy's career incredibly
successful career, I might add, because it's like an Esop's fable.
Here's somebody who wants so badly to just be accepted

(03:21):
that he resolves to make the greatest rock album ever made.
And I'm gonna make the most beautiful melodies ever in
hopes that it will make people like me, they'll see me.
I'll work so hard on this thing is gonna be great,
will make people happy and love me. And it's a
rational you know, you're setting so off for a disappointment
if you ever have a goal like that, if ever
approach anything like that. But he succeeds several times over

(03:42):
with Siamese dream melancholy, infinite sadness, and instead of winning
the acceptance that he craves, his just sort of overblown
earnestness and the scope of his ambition makes him this
object of like mockery and scorn by all the sort
of like hip elite and all these people that he
thinks are cooler than him. Well, yeah, and that's the
thing with Billy Corgan. There's always this hip elite, the

(04:03):
shadowy cabal of cool people who is conspiring against him.
And you know, he used the word tragedy of his
career before, and I think it is a tragedy in
the sense of like not being able to appreciate what
you have. Because by any other rubric, Billy Corgan is
one of the most successful rock stars of the last
thirty years. He's written songs that have been on the radio,

(04:24):
that were big hits, that were big MTV hits. He
has sold millions of records, He's played sold out tours
and arenas all around the world. It's the career that
most musicians aspire to and will never achieve. And yet
there's this constant sense of grievance that he has that
people aren't respecting him enough, that he's not getting uh
the acclaim from the tastemakers that he feels that he deserves.

(04:47):
And as you watch his career unfold, you can see
that this perspective starts to extend beyond just how he
looks at the music world. It actually takes on the
predominant view of how he sees everything. And he ends
up making this journey from you know, talking about how

(05:09):
you know, Kim Gordon doesn't respect me enough in the
pages of Spin and like the early nineties to the
early two thousand tens where he's actually going on going
on Alex Jones to complain about how the media is
controlling people's minds and like you know, castrating men and
all the sort of zany wacky things that you hear
Alex Jones say, and Billy Corgan is shaking his head

(05:32):
in agreement with him. And it really shows like how
when you have this worldview that everyone is against me
all the time, it can curdle into stuff that's actually harmful,
you know, like where you're not just talking about payment anymore.
Now you're talking about like things that actually matter. Uh.
And that's been Billy Corgan's trajectory over the past years.

(05:56):
A lot of ways. He reminds me of another Billy,
Billy Joel. He someone with a huge amount of talent.
He wants to make great art that's accessible and enjoyable
to most people. But he thinks he's just like being
penalized for having these populist aims by cultural commentators who
thinks that these efforts are you know, shallow or even
on some level like evil, evil sell out kind of
things that disqualify him from serious critical consideration. Which you know,

(06:21):
how much of that is true and how much of
it is not is up for debate. But I think
the core of his problem is he is his own
image problem. The amount that he kind of complains and
has open up about his his you know, his grievances
about what he credit that he's not given, I think
is something that kind of makes him unpleasant, ends up
bringing more of that on himself. Right, And you know
the word that you use before, I think is very telling,

(06:43):
like penalize, you know, like that is totally the world
view of someone like Billy Corgan, that I am being
punished for reaching so many people that like, I write
songs that millions of people like, and now I can't
get any any respect for it, when again, in reality,
he's not being penalized, he's actually being richly rewarded for
being a populist rocker. And the fact of the matter

(07:06):
is is that when you get to that level of being,
you know, as famous as Billy Corgan was, certainly in
the nineties, you're gonna have some people who don't like you.
I mean, that's just part of reality. And you know, yeah,
the cost of being adored by millions of people is
that there will be some very loud, vocal critics who

(07:27):
can't stand you, and can't stand you in part because
you're everywhere your your ubiquity itself becomes annoying to a
lot of people. Um. I also think too, like with
with Corrigan, his midwesternness to me is so fascinating and
I think it has a lot to do with how
he sees the world. And it's really I think the

(07:48):
thing that I most relate to with Billy Corgan. I
think another reason why I think he's so interesting is
that I do, um see myself somewhat in in how
he views the world. And I think it has to
do with being from the Midwest and having that chip
on your shoulder that you have when you grow up
and fly over country and you're told in the media

(08:08):
that you're not as hip or cool or into it
as people on the coast and why are they getting
all the attention and why aren't we getting enough attention?
And that's just such an endemic, uh feeling I think
in the Midwest, and Billy Corgan just just displays that
through and through. I'll say that, you know, I'll admit

(08:28):
to relating to Billy Corgan, but I feel like it's
like the worst parts of myself, and i feel like
I look at Billy Corgan and I'm like, well, if
I actually believe that stuff too much, like I could
end up like that. So he's like a cautionary tail
in a way. But I mean I feel like, I mean,
you're not from the Midwest, but I feel like you
also kind of relate to Billy Corgan in a way, right, Oh, definitely,
the whole try hard thing again, it's something that makes

(08:50):
me really love him because I feel the same way.
I'm I'm gonna do this thing. I'm gonna work really
hard on. It's gonna make people happy and they're gonna
like me, that's all. It's they're gonna like me and
it's gonna be great. And then whenever you approach anything
from that perspective, you're set himself up for disappointment, and
you know, when you don't get the reaction you crave,
which you know, by the way, is completely unrealistic and
will never happen, then you just get resentful as all hell,

(09:12):
and like people can sense that too, and yeah, it's
just this awful cycle. So no, I feel bad for
the amount of effort that he that he puts out
and that he feels just on that emotional level, he's
not rewarded in that way, and all he wants is
to be liked, and he wants to make a good
thing and work really hard on the good thing. And
in the nineties, you know when sort of being disaffected

(09:32):
and aloof is sort of the pinnacle cool, trying really
really hard is not cool, and I I feel I
feel for that. I relate to that. Now you'll notice
that we haven't really talked about Stephen Milkmus at all
so far in this episode, and I mean, and I
think that's because it's fair to say that this ravelry,
while it's started, I guess because of what Stephen Malkmus did,

(09:54):
it really is only about Billy Corgan, right, I mean,
because basically, you know, Pavement, they put out this song
range Life in four and then Billy Corgan just ends
up reacting to it for like the next twenty five years, right,
and Malcolm's is basically like, I I didn't need it
to be that big of a deal, you know, I mean, yeah,

(10:14):
I feel like the name of this episode could have
really been like Billy Corgan versus the mean voices in
Billy Corgan's head. You know, he's just like shadow boxing
this one line from a Pavement song that could kind
of sort of maybe be construed as like a slight
dig from a guy who kind of has a history
of dishing out slight digs, you know what I mean.
One of my favorite Malcolm's songs is The Unseen Power

(10:35):
of the Picket Fence, which he's talking about R E.
M is love for r EM, and he mentions not once,
but twice the song on their album that he likes
the least time after time. So it's feeling he's writing
a song about a band that he professes to love
and he's talking about the song that he likes least
from them. That just kind of lets you know, you know,
he's kind of a reverend. Like it's not it's not
a big deal, but for Billy it's a very big deal.

(10:58):
But I yeah, I don't think Malcolmus in n or
now cared about it a fraction as much as Billy
Corgan ever did. And while that's all true, I think
what makes this such an interesting rivalry to me, and
I wrote about this revelry in my book Your Favorite
Band Is Killing Me. So I've been thinking about this
for a long time, is that even though Stevien Malcolmus
isn't really an active participant, he is a really interesting

(11:19):
contrast to Billy Corgan because you know, as you've said,
he's this try hard, very ambitious, grandiose type person. He's
from the Midwest. There's an insecurity that's inherent in him. Uh.
He tends to see people out to get him because
of that. And then you have someone like Malcolmus, who
is you know, he was born in Santa Monica, California.

(11:39):
He has a real West Coast vibe to him. There's
an easy goingness to him. He's a really good looking guy.
He's a guy that I actually think does work really hard,
but because of his casual demeanor, he has this slacker image,
like it's he has the image of being someone who
writes a song falling out of bed in the morning,
you know, and like records it in five minutes and

(12:02):
it ends up sounding great and the critics love it.
And you could see how that sort of artist would
drive Billy Corgan mad because he's trying so much harder
and he's showing you how much harder he's working, and
he's not getting that specific kind of gratification from people.
So just in terms of the personality ties, I think

(12:23):
it's a really interesting conversation to have. But we should
talk about range life because it is the inciting incident
in this rivalry. And I referenced it earlier, and it's
a song, like I said, it came out on the
album Crooked Rain. Crooked Rain, which was the second Pavement record,
and it was really the first one that had like
a mainstream impact. And the line about spanshing pumpkins in

(12:49):
the song was actually improvised in the studio or it
was come up like pretty much at the last minute, um,
and it was intended just to make the other guys
in the band laugh, which it did. It like they
laughed hysterically at this line. And what he sings is
out on tour with the Smashing pumpkins, nature kids. They
don't have no function. I don't understand what they mean,

(13:12):
and I could really give a fuck. Okay, so he
calls them nature kids. He implies that you know, they're
this empty band and he doesn't really care about him.
And then there's another reference to all rock huge band
of the time, Stone Temple Pilots, and I guess this
is a disk, but I always thought it was actually

(13:32):
kind of a cool phrase. He calls them elegant Bachelor's, Like,
would you be insulted? Not be mad at that? Yeah,
I was gonna say I wouldn't be insulted if someone
called be an elegant bachelor. I mean, it's definitely kind
of snarky, but I don't know if there's a beauty
to it too that I think actually sounds pretty cool.
You call someone an elegant anything, and it's like, I

(13:53):
don't know, it just sounds so much more poetic. And
I also think it's a much better name, like a
better band name than Stone Temple Pilots too, like the
again Bachelor's right, absolutely, they they should have like changed
the name right after that song. Um, but anyway, they
put this line in the song and I think Malcolm's
at the time felt a little bit of worry about it.
He's like, I don't want to start anything. Maybe we

(14:13):
shouldn't keep this in the song, but he was persuaded
against that. They put the song out, and uh, you know,
I think I think their thought at the time was
that I'm sure they just assumed that Billy Corgan either
wouldn't hear the song or he wouldn't care. But he
did hear the song and he did care a lot. Yeah,

(14:37):
I'm awful lot. He He was interviewed by David frickear
after the song came out, and uh, Frick asked them
directly about the song, and Billy chalked it up to jealousy,
and he said, you know, there's always been flak we've
gotten from certain bands, the mud Honeys, the pavements of
this world. But somehow we cheated our way to the top,
that we deceived the public to get where we're at.

(14:57):
We have our own level of integrity that we've kept too,
and we're not going away. So I think it's rooted
in jealousy. And that's kind of where someone is looking
at a picture and saying, this is where I belong
and I don't understand why I'm not there. Okay, so
that's what what corgan is saying is like these guys,
these guys are just jealous. That's the only reason I'm
taking checks. To man, everyone everyone's everyone's saying we cheated
our way to get here. But but no, which, by

(15:19):
the way, I don't I don't think Stephen Malcolm's for
a second wanted to be in Smashing Pumpkins. Like, I
don't think it was jealousy. No, you know, it's like
he had his band and he just had a totally
different mindset. I don't think he could even imagine being
a band like that. I was gonna say, I always
feel like Malcolm's was very comfortable with his level of fame.

(15:41):
I've never I've never interviewed, and I know you have.
Did you ever get that impression like it seemed like
he was very happy with where he was and how
things shook out. Yeah, I mean again, like I can't
claim to have too much knowledge of his inner life,
but he exudes sort of a zen like calm like
when you talk to him, and yeah, I I don't

(16:03):
get the sense that he like wishes that he was
starring in black and white videos directed by Kevin curse
Lake and you know, playing with like fiece orchestras. You know,
that's that doesn't seem like that was something that he
would have been into. But Billy just he keeps twisting
the knife. And another interview around the same time, he said,
people don't fall in love to Pavement. They put on

(16:24):
Smashing Pumpkins or Whole or Nirvana because these bands actually
means something to them. That's a diss you know. I
mean the line in uh Arranged Life. Okay, maybe kind of,
but but that's a diss right there. Yeah. Again for
the kids out there, I feel like we have to
take a moment here to try to explain like what's
going on here, because again I feel like, when you
look back, this seems like the narcissism of small differences,

(16:46):
you know, like the epitome of that, because you have
two bands essentially that are on different levels. Kind of
like Smashing Pumpkins was certainly selling more records than Pavement,
but it's not like Pavement. It was like playing in
you know, dive bars for like three people every night.
I mean, they were also on MTV. They were getting

(17:09):
written up in all the big rock magazines. I think
Crooked Rain. Crooked Rains sold like a couple of hundred
thousand records, not as much as Met Siamese Dream or Melancholy,
but still like a good number of records. And you know,
if they hadn't been at least a little bit famous, like,
no one would have cared about this song. Like the
fact that Pavement did have some prominence and was of

(17:30):
course a critically adored band, It's what made this revelry possible.
So again, this idea that like Smashing Pumpkins and Pavement
were from totally different worlds, and that somehow Pavement was
going after Smashing Pumpkins because they weren't successful enough. I
think it made more sense at the time, but now

(17:51):
it just seems kind of weird, especially now when there
aren't even that many rock bands as popular as Pavement,
Like there's a lot of bands that would love to
sell as many records as Pavement did. In I mean,
you're younger than me, Jordan, you were like a fetus.
I think when this whole thing was happening, is this
strange for you at all? Like, does this make sense
that these bands were feuding? It's strange to me now

(18:13):
because I I just because I know how the story
kind of ended and where both bands ended up, and
it does seem like two completely different stratospheres. And I'm
just wondering if almost at the time, when it seemed like,
you know, maybe Pavement were actually considered a sales threatened
could eclip smashing pumpkins like that? Maybe I could imagine,
But yeah, it just feels like fighting over abstract ideals

(18:38):
that don't really inhibit the enjoyment of any of these songs.
Like I it's just such a classic example of like
fans can like both, you know, it's not like I
a fan seeing themselves as one or the other necessarily
in your your Beatles and stones, your instincts versus back
Street Boys kind of thing. It just feels like, again,
just one guy who has a problem with one guy

(18:58):
who really didn't mean that much harm. Yeah, I don't
think that Pavement was perceived, like by Smashing Pumpkins, as
like a sales thread. I actually think it's the opposite.
I think at that time, you know, the the indie
politics of the nineties were that if you sold fewer
records in a way, you were more legitimate, and that
being the band that sold millions of records and was

(19:19):
embraced by the mainstream, it was almost like a liability
in terms of your credibility. So I think that is
the thing that it was just assumed at the time
when they looked at the at these two bands, and
it was like part of just the general understanding of
like why they would be in conflict. That's been totally
lost now, like that context doesn't exist at all, Like
people don't think that way. So I think it just

(19:42):
makes it stranger maybe in retrospect than it was at
the time. Like at the time, it seemed logical that
a band like Pavement would would make fun of Smashing Pumpkins. Um.
But you know, for for Malcolmus, you know, he's been
asked about this so many times over the years by
journalists and he's basically has said the same thing over
an old or where he you know, talked about how

(20:03):
it was just something that he did spur the moment
to make his friends in the band laugh, and that
it wasn't necessarily meant to be an attack on Smashing
Pumpkins or even a critique. He's even said that he
liked some Smashing Pumpkins songs. It was just that this
was the band that was on all the magazine covers,
and if you were going to make a joke about
a band, they were the obvious punchline, you know. And

(20:26):
it wasn't even about their quality. It was more about
their their ubiquity at the time. And you know, to me,
the annalogy I would make is like range life is
almost like you're hanging out with your friends and saying
snarky things at the person on the TV screen, and
you're doing it to make your friends laugh, and and
you don't think the person on the TV screen is

(20:46):
actually going to hear you. You're just doing it because
it's fun and he's on TV. And when someone has
a lot of power, they're just an easy target. Um.
But it wasn't anything personal. Uh. But of course leading
to later on too when he did live versions of
the song didn't substitute like the Spice Girls and Connon

(21:07):
Crows in there for Smashing Pumpkins, like just the sort
of show like, no, this is a placeholder for whoever
is big at this moment right exactly, which, by the way,
I wish he would have like talked about County Crows
in the Originals song that would have been amazing. You
could have gotten some good I love County Crows, but
you could get some good digs in on Adam Derrit's
I'm sure, Um but yeah, I mean I interviewed Stephen
Malkomis about this specifically many years ago, and he essentially said, like,

(21:30):
you know, especially Pumpkins one, like they were really successful.
They were more successful than we were. It's like, I
don't know why he cared so much. You know why.
You know, You've got everything that you would have wanted,
you know, So what does it matter what we say?
But Billy Corgan internalized this song almost immediately, I feel like,
and it has caused him to lash out at Pavement

(21:52):
for decades, right, I mean the fallout was kind of immediate. Um.
Pavement were due to tour with Lollapaluza for but supposedly
Smashing Pumpkins, who are the headliners, threatened to cancel their
dates and pull out if payment performed, and so payment
were kicked off the tour. Now, Corrigan has denied this
up and down for decades. Now, I don't know, I

(22:13):
personally tend to believe it. What do you think I mean, yeah,
I would tend to believe it. It seems like his
fingerprints were all over it, and certainly from Lalla loses perspective.
If you had to book one of those bands, you
would want to have Smashing Pumpkins because they would have
been a bigger draw, so you would imagine that they
had some power in that. Um. It's just funny to
me though, because like the band that ended up getting
booked instead of Pavement was guided by voices who were

(22:37):
on the same record label as Pavement, Matador and UM.
I didn't interview recently with Topen Sprout. The guitars have
guided by voices, and he was trying to remember, like
the name of the person that got by voices, got
into a conflict with on a lot of pollutes a
tour and it couldn't remember the person's name. He's like, yeah,
that tall guy from Chicago, what was his name? And

(22:59):
I like Billy Corgan and he's like, yeah, of course.
And he told me that, like, Billy Corgan liked to
play basketball backstage at Lallapalooza and Robert Pollard and Jim
Pollard played him one day and they got really aggressive.
There's a lot of trash talking, and Billy Corgan left
because he lost. He stormed off and apparently he had

(23:19):
his own net that he carried around, and he took
the net off the rim and he stormed off to
his tour bus. And Tobin Sprout told me that later
he found the net, like Billy Corgan's net, and he
like threw it like into a field or something. So
it's like, you know, like you get rid of one

(23:40):
snarky indie rock band and then there comes another snarky
indie rock band to mess with you. You know, it's
like like Billy Corgan just can't win. You feel bad.
I mean, there are just it seems like this is
just like these like hip indie rock bands just lining
up the torture. This guy who's just like fumbling with
the net, who brings their own net. First of all,
I've never even heard of that, no man. I mean

(24:01):
I feel a little bad for him. I don't feel
that bad for him. I feel like he brings it
on himself, and he's gonna keep bringing on himself With
Malcolm's I mean he keeps talking about it through the years, right,
I mean, Malcolm's payment broke up at ninety nine, Smashing
Pumpkins split for a bit in two thousand, got back
together and oh six, And you think at this stage
Billy would be like, you know, I want my band

(24:25):
is alive and survival Pavement at the Pavement. But Malcolm's
even said an interview I think it was in two
thousand eight with Blender. Yeah, Billy's over it. It's fine,
but um, but he was very much not over it.
He uh the Union show, No no, This is the
part of the rest of development episode when the narrator said,
but Billy hadn't gotten over it. Pavement reunited in in

(24:49):
and Billy finds out they're going to be sharing a
bill at a festival in Brazil, and and and he's outraged.
He posts this irate message to Twitter that, like the
reading full, just found out Smashing pump Kins is playing
with Pavement in Brazil. It's going to be one of
those New Orleans type funerals. I say that because they
represent the death of the alternative dream and we follow

(25:10):
the affirmation of life part Funny how those who pointed
the big finger of sellout are the biggest defenders now, yawn,
they have no love. By the way, we'll be the
band up there playing new songs because we have the
love xx. Now. I always found this is a really
interesting take for a guy who just recorded a song
with Jessica Simpson for a v H one reality show.

(25:31):
That's right, Well, because he did that, He did that
because he has the love. You know, he did that
for love, um and not for anything else. I should
they didn't pay him at all for that. Yeah, I
mean what I think it is hilarious is it is
that not even Billy Corgan in two understood the difference
between alternative rock and indie rock. That even uh, a
general of the alternative versus indie rock wars of the nineties,

(25:54):
you know, could no longer discern the difference between these bands.
He just sort of absorbed Pavement into alternative rock world
twenty years later. Uh, it just again underscores the meaningless
how meaningless like a lot of this was you know,
after the fact. And his argument kind of doesn't make
sense because two years later he's still fuming about this,
and he basically calls out Pavement and a bunch of

(26:16):
interviews for being sellouts for reuniting on like a nostalgia tour,
and he thinks that, you know, these grunge bands need
to step up and take on the social issues of
the day, and they're not. They're just making a cash
grab playing the old songs on the nostalgia circuit, which
I don't know. He reunited his own band and kind
of did the same thing. I mean, I guess he
put out new albums. I suppose, but yeah, I I

(26:39):
think he's He's sense of self importance is kind of
off the charts in this saying that, you know, grunge
needs to come and and tackle, you know, what's wrong
the tea partiers or whatever is wrong with the society's
ills at this point. Yeah, Billy, I love you, but
like the kids were not looking for, you know, filter
to come back and write protest songs and in the
two thousand Tents, you know, like that was not what

(27:00):
the world was looking for. What the world was looking
for from those bands at that time were for you
to play the hits like that's what you were, That's
what they want you were, you know. And again this
kind of shows like how all bands that seem like
their polar opposites eventually end up in the same place,
and like, you know, you could have Smashing Pumpkins and
Pavement seemingly represent different ideals and different music scenes for

(27:23):
people at the time. Twenty years later, they're both essentially
nostalgia acts. You know, they're on they're doing reunion tours,
and you know, old people like me are coming out
to go see them. And I saw both of these
reunion tours. I saw the reunion tour for Pavement in
two thousand and ten, and I saw the Smashing Pumpkins
reunion tour, which was a debacle in a lot of ways,

(27:45):
but musically it was pretty good. I mean, they sounded
good on those tours. Um you know, people were just
going out for a good time. You know, they want
to relive something that they loved when they were younger.
You know, for me, like I had never off Pavement
in the nineties, so to see them in two thousand
ten was was pretty cool. Like to hear those songs

(28:05):
being played, It's in the same thing with Smashing Pumpkins.
I mean, you know, I'll due respect to Billy Corgan,
I wasn't going to hear Oceana Deep Cuts, you know,
I was going to hear Siamese Dream Hits and Melancholie
The Infinite Sadness hits. Uh, and they delivered for me
on that on that level, so I appreciated that. But

(28:26):
again it kind of shows that, like these bands, it
seems so different at one time, you know, ended up
in the same place. We're gonna take a quick break
and get a word from our sponsor before we get
two more rivals. It's funny to me too that at

(28:47):
least before their two eighteen reunion, I mean, Billy Corgan
fronted Smashing Pumpkins were almost the level of like, you know,
one of those bands from the sixties as like one
remaining member. He's the sole member of the original Smashing Pumpkins,
So it kind of that even kind of seems opportunistic
in a way, you know, like those nostalgia bands that
play like state fairs with like the original basis for

(29:09):
you know, I don't know, Dave Clark five or something,
you know, right exactly, And that two eighteens tour, I mean,
I feel like people remember it because of Darcy Darcy Retzky,
who was going to be involved and then wasn't involved,
and it just turned into this like public meltdown about
you know, them exchanging, you know, them sharing like their
private texts with the with the public and you know,

(29:31):
just showing how dysfunctional this band is and again making
Billy Corgan look like an asshole. I mean, that was
the that was the end result of that whole thing.
So even like they're big kind of comeback where it
was going to be all the original members, like, you know,
they couldn't pull that off. And Malcolm's came for him
for that too, right, wasn't he like kind of on
the sidelines making fun of a whole train wreck that

(29:53):
it became yeah, like what, yeah, what do you say?
I mean because he was basically like saying like, look,
you know, you made fun of us for our reunion
tour and now you're doing this this tour, basically just
calling him a hypocrite. Yeah, and the fact that you
know he wasn't even not was a hypocrite, but he's
also seemingly screwing Darcy over two. Yeah, it's so funny
to me that Billy was just so bothered by the

(30:14):
semi fight from a band who you know, had a
fraction of the commercial success that he had. You know,
I think her Crooked Rain got to like a hundred
and twenty one on Billboard and cut your hair made
it into the rotation ONMTV, but it's just it's not
the same. He's a better guitarist, he's writing objectively better songs,
but I wouldn't say objectively. I think that they're both

(30:37):
great in their own way. But yes, you're right, I
agree that it's insane that he let this get to
him as much as it did and didn't just have
like a sense of humor about it. I have this theory.
I don't know. I want to see if you get
holds water. I have this theory that Billy Corgan is
the Larry David of nineties Indie rock. Okay, the the
comparison is as follows. I mean, there's obvious similarities in

(30:57):
the hair department, but beyond that there actions are motivated
almost entirely out of spite and grudges and insecurity. But
it pushes them to do like objectively great things. I mean,
you've got Siamese dream and Melancholy on Billy's side, you
have Latte Larry's for Larry David. They're they're ruled by
this rigid code of ethics and conduct that just sort

(31:19):
of exists in their own mind, and they don't like
share it. With anyone until there's a transgression made, usually
a really innocent transgression, at what point the rules just
stated ad nauseum at a very high volume, and they're
just braided. And this makes them wildly and popular socially
and usually very unpleasant to be around, possibly because despite
their extreme and often really inappropriate overreactions, they still see

(31:42):
themselves no matter what is the victim, which is infuriating
when you've reached that level of success. They each have
these remarkable achievements in their past Seinfeld and Smashing Pumpkins
that you know you can't write them off entirely no
matter how irritating they are. And and they both also
date when men who are way out of the league
Jessica Simpson and Charlnes. That's my theory. I like that theory.

(32:05):
I will say that, like Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm,
he's always surrounded by friends like as negative as he is,
a lot of people like Larry, and I don't know
if that's true of Billy, Like I feel like Larry, Uh,
there's a loveability to his cantankerousness. Like I love Larry David.
I love how cranky is because when he lashes out
at people you feel like they deserve it, and he's

(32:27):
acting in a way that you wish you could act
if you didn't have the social skills that you have.
But it's like, yeah, we you you would love to tell,
you know, the person who's annoying in your life, how
annoying they are, and and and and to not put
on sort of the nice cities that were all forced
to put on, whereas I feel like with Billy Corgan,
he's not doing that. I feel like he lashes out

(32:47):
of people, uh that don't deserve it, and it makes
him less likable. So that would be my one qualm
with that. Although I like the Cheryl Hines Jessica Simpson parallel.
I think that makes a lot of sense um for me. However,
I feel like the the analogy I always come back
to is Richard Nixon. I think Billy Corgan is Richard Nixon.

(33:09):
And I wrote about this a lot and in my
book because I feel like it's really I think the
key to understanding who Billy Corgan is. UM. I read
this great book by Rick Perlstein called nixon Land. It's
a classic book. I don't know if you've ever read it. Um.
But he talks in that book about how when Richard
Nixon was in college, he formed this group called the Authorigonians,

(33:33):
and it was a group. It was a social group
for students who couldn't get into the exclusive fraternity on campus,
which was known as the Franklins. And the ideology behind
the the author Agonians was that we are the real people,
were the real kind of assault of the earth students
at this school, and we're being put down by the

(33:57):
elites and the Franklins, and we're the style majority. We
are the silent majority, essentially exactly. So Pearlstein uses this
anecdote to explain basically Richard Nixon's political career that this
is something that he went back to time and again,
that he appealed to people's sense of insecurity and persecution,

(34:20):
that there was always someone out there doing better than them,
putting them down. And if only those people didn't exist,
then I would have a perfect life and I wouldn't
have any problems. And I feel like Billy Corgan has
that same worldview I think he has. I think he
sees himself as someone who comes from good mid Midwestern stock,

(34:41):
that he works his butt off and you know, there's
a lot of truth in that if you look at
his output in the nineties, the amount of songs that
he was writing, like around the time of Melancholeague, which
is a double album that spawned like a six disc
box set of East sides. I think there's like fifty

(35:01):
B sides or so maybe more that he run around
that time. Just an incredible amount of output and a
really high batting average at that time. Like a lot
of those songs are really good. Um, and he's playing
all the parts for the most part, right, Jimmy's drums
exactly so, and he's a perfectius in the studio. He's
a really great guitarist. Um. And yet critics gravitated to Pavement,

(35:27):
which again, you know you could say had maybe more
of an exclusive following. It was a more discerning following.
You know, they weren't as popular, but again, as I
was saying, because of the indie politics at the time,
it kind of made them more appealing to people, because
you know, the people are like smashing pumpkins, you could
say broadly, you know, like the jocks at school like

(35:48):
smashing pumpkins. Like everyone likes smashing pumpkins, but only a
select few people. Well, I guess we'll just call him Franklin's.
The Franklin's liked pavement, the Authorigonians like smashing pumpkins. And
to even carry that analogy further, I feel like Malcolm's
has like some JFK like qualities, you know, because like

(36:11):
if you think about that, like in eighteen sixty debate
between Nixon and Kennedy, that historic debate that people always
give credit for, you know, being a big breakthrough, and
how politicians are presented on television, you know, JFK looked amazing,
looked immaculate, and Nixon was like, you know, sweaty, looked
like he had a shadow, he wasn't wearing any makeup,

(36:33):
And um, I think Malkmus had that same sort of
thing where he was good looking, he was charismatic, and
he didn't have that awkwardness that Billy Corgan has that
can be off putting. And I'm sure he looked at
someone like Malkmus or like you said before, like Kurt
Cobain or Chris Cornow or Eddie Vetter and just was

(36:54):
mad that it seemed like they weren't working as hard
as he was. Although again I don't think that's necessarily true.
I think everyone else was working hard too, they just
didn't make a point of four grounding. They're hard work,
you know, in the same way that he did. Like,
you know, he worked hard, and he made sure that
you knew it. You know that he was writing all
the songs and he was playing all the parts, and like,

(37:17):
I'm the guy, I'm doing everything, and that's a big
part of his identity. Yeah, I mean, I'm succeeding on
every level that I should on paper, But they still
hate me. Why do they hate me? What else can
I do? What else can I give? I mean, that
line I think could be said by either one of them,
Nixon or Billy right exactly. And it's interesting too, because

(37:38):
when you think that way, you can present yourself as
an underdog even when you are hugely successful. Like I
think there was always an underdog element to Nixon, you know,
because he felt like he was an outsider and he
didn't have maybe the family connections that someone like JFK had,
Ivy League stuff stuff, even though like college and California,

(38:01):
even though he had been vice president, you know, even
though he had been a politician for many decades before
he was finally elected president in n UM. I think
the same thing is true with with with Billy Corgan.
I mean, like you step back and it's like, in
no way was he an underdog, you know, really like
especially Pumpkins was like pretty successful from the beginning, and

(38:21):
they had a lot of industry support, you know, from
pretty early on UM. But because of people like Malcolmus,
Corgan could always feel that, well, I'm not getting the
same kind of respect that he's getting, and in some
respects that is this is making my career harder. Because
there was so many other people too that we're also

(38:43):
taking shots to Billy Corgan at that time, and we
mentioned Kim Gordon, Steve Albani had that incredible it was
it was like an open letter, right, he wrote this
like open letter that recalled Smashing Pumpkins frauds, bullshit, and
he also called them Mario Speedwagon, right, yes, exactly. Yeah,
I think Mold called him. I called him like the
grunge monkeys, which it's funny. I mean it's not really

(39:06):
true though. I mean I don't think that they were
like the prefabricated like that. But yeah, I mean I
think with Corrigan, as he starts to really internalize this
underdog thing. It coincides like with Mension Pumpkins basically starting
to go into decline like after Melancholy, and you know,
they put out a Door in which I think is
actually like a pretty good record and everyone always yeah,

(39:29):
I agree, but it didn't have as many hits as
like the previous records. And also, like the music scene
was just changing too at that time. That's like when
new metal was really starting to come in, and really
like none of the you know, big alternative rock bands
of the early nineties were really able to do well
in that era. So like at that point, not only

(39:51):
is Billy Corgan feeling like he's not getting the respect
he deserves now, he's not even having the same amount
of success, right and it's just, you know, it's heartbreaking.
He had this incredible line that really just sort of
lays it all out there. I said, I wish from
day one people would have looked at me and said,
you're all right, come on, joined the team. But it's
never been that way with me. I don't know why.

(40:12):
Maybe I'm a dick it shows, I don't know, but
they did ask him to join the team. I mean again,
I feel like it's it's just interesting, like how success
ends up getting defined. I guess. I mean, I think
it is true that a lot of other rock stars
at the time didn't like him, and they made it
clear that they didn't like him. But at the same time, again,

(40:34):
it's just sort of amazing how the worldview ends up
making what you think is true actually true. You know,
like if he hadn't thought of himself as this sort
of put upon outsider, would he have ended up as
a put upon outsider? You know, it is the question
with him, I think. And it's funny too how in

(40:54):
a lot of interviews he goes out of his way
to sort of credit artists that were hugely successful commercially
but just we're absolutely ravaged by the critics at the
height of their fan bands like Queen Black, Sabbath, Led Zeppelin,
and you know, I sees himself as one of them.
I always felt, Yeah, there's that. Uh, he's actually like
one of the best people that's interviewed in the Rush

(41:16):
documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage, and uh, in the way
that he talks about how Rush didn't get the critical
appreciation that he felt that he deserved, and uh, you know,
he says like you know, they were really a people's band.
The great hole in their careers that they've never been
truly accepted by the intelligentsia. What was it? They just
didn't fit in a neat box. And I just felt

(41:38):
like every quote in that movie that's ostensibly about Rush
from Billy Corgan is actually about himself. To me, that's
a quote about himself. And I think this is because
he has a hard time maybe looking beyond his own grievances,
his own like way of like how he feels that
the world has not treated him well. Um. What I

(42:00):
think it's funny too, is that Stephen malkomis also really
likes Rush, Like I don't know if you know that
he's talked about that in interviews about how much he's
talked about Rush. He's talked a lot about like about
classic rock bands. I remember I saw an interview like
where he talked about how much he liked the band Chicago,
especially like their earlier records, And it just kind of incredible.

(42:21):
It just goes to show that, like, you know, these
are like two middle aged guys that like we're you know,
part of Generation X, and I think probably liked a
lot of the same music, and if they could actually
get together or if they didn't have any of his baggage.
I just wonder, like if they could have been friends,
like it's some other reality. Oh yeah, they're definitely more likely.

(42:44):
They are different. They go and go over to one
of their houses, put on twenty five or six to four,
and uh just kick back. Yeah. No, I and Billy
said similar things about like he slag off Radiohead for
their pomposity and said, you know, I'm more of a
rainbow d purple guy. And you know, I think Richie
Blackmore is just as valid as as Johnny Greenwood. And yeah,

(43:05):
it's the same deal too. He's talking about himself. He's
he's putting in the place a sort of the critical
favorites and talking about what he sees a sort of
the people's band, the silent majorities band, right, you know,
And it's interesting to me and I alluded to this earlier,
but like it's interesting like where he takes that worldview
as he enters middle age. Because you know, it's one
thing to to be mad at music critics or you know,

(43:30):
the members of Payment or Sonic Youth, but you can
really see that like it started to affect him politically
in some way. And I just go back to his
appearance on Alex Jones in I don't know if you've
ever seen that video, but it's like it's pretty weird,
I mean, because he ends up talking a lot about

(43:51):
how the media distorts the truth and keeps people down,
you know, which is something that I think he probably
would have said about, you know, people that right for
spin in like the nineties. But now he's talking about
like the news media, and he goes on this riff
about how TV has castrated the American male that uh,

(44:12):
you know, you can't see real men on television anymore.
And what's he defining that as? Like, I means he
like duck Dynasty, Like what's he talking about? I don't
know what that means. And it just blows me away
that this is the guy that wrote this arm you know,
like he wrote again like I used to be a
little boy, Like this is like one of the most
quotable lines in Billy Corgan's song book. And now he's
talking about the American male being being castrated. Um, it's

(44:38):
just crazy. And you know, and again I think when
you look at Corgan and Malchomus as sort of contrasting figures.
And he said it earlier, talking about like Billy Corgan
being like the try hard guy who's going to show
you how hard he's working and and and sees himself
as like a man of the people essentially, and you
can see like how that really earns bad as he

(45:01):
gets older and it turns into sort of like this
dark populism almost that you see on things like Alex
Jones and then Malkmus on the other side, who again
I think his image is is of someone who doesn't
care and has laid back, but I think it's actually
worked pretty hard over the course of you know, these

(45:24):
past thirty years to establish a career and indie rock
you know where he's successful, but he's not hugely successful.
But he's also been able to carve out his own
niche in a way that I think is actually pretty
hard to do. And I don't know if you would
actually maybe want to make the argument that he is
more of a real populist in a way than Billy

(45:45):
Corgan is. Like if you want to call someone an elite,
I think you can make the argument that Billy Corgan
in a way is an elite much more than than
Stephen Malkmus is, especially now with the benefit of all
this hindset that we have, and he certainly exists in
a really elite stratosphere of of of rock stars, I
mean and even just their personas to mean, Malcolm seems

(46:05):
to have no persona. He just sort of seems like
a guy who, like you said, just falls out of
out of bed and writes great songs. He seems to
have no image, whereas Billy Corgan just seems to really
get off on playing Billy Corgan, you know, with like
the zero shirts and those Ferra Too pancake makeup and
the hair and these Alex Jones contrary and interviews and
all the wrestling stuff he's been doing. Like, I think

(46:27):
you alluded to this in your book, but like, what's
the deal with Midwest artists morphing into like these bizarre
self caricatures. You've got Michael Jackson, Axel Rose prints to
a certain degree, Billy Corgan. Yeah, I think it's just
that idea. I think it goes back to the chip
on the shoulder, the idea that I'm in flyover country.
There's nothing inherently glamorous about me or where I'm from,

(46:48):
So I have to construct glamour, you know, I have
to construct an image. I can't just be myself because
who I actually am is not very interesting or it's boring.
And that's worked for a lot of people, um and
I think it can be a positive thing. But with Billy,
it just seems like it's turned into this like fitfully

(47:09):
self aware, like wrestling hell type persona, you know, like
where he enjoys annoying people, but at the same time
really wants their affection. You know. It's like, if you're
going to be a good heal you have to genuinely
not care that people hate you. And I don't think
that's ever been true with Billy Corgan. All right, and
we'll be right back with more rivals. It's always interesting me.

(47:40):
I wonder how much it pisses Billy corganoff that Pavement
haven't at least a new album in you know, twenty
plus years at this point, and their reputation has just
grown and grown and grown exponentially since they were a live,
active band, and Billy's out there working his ass off,
putting out all these new albums, doing all these tours.
And I wouldn't argue it's necessarily shrinking, but it's definitely
not producing the same dividends that the Pavement is, but

(48:03):
their legacy and reputation, it's just I wonder how he
feels about that. I'm sure not good. Well, you know,
I actually feel like the reputation of the Great Smashing
Pumpkin records, which you know, Siamese Dream and Melancholy in
the Infinite Sadness, I feel like that's pretty bullet proof, um.
And I do mean literally bulletproof, because like Billy Corgan

(48:25):
is like shot bullets into his legacy over and over
and over again, and he hasn't been able to kill
it yet. You know, that's how good those records are.
I think that now it's almost like people have to
separate their love of those records from Billy Corgan. You know,
there's a lot of people I think that still listen

(48:46):
to those albums that I think that Billy Corgan is
a bit of a dufus, you know, but like they
aren't going to let that get in the way of
enjoying those records. I mean, he I feel like the
case for Billy Corrigan is a lot easier than maybe
just is my own bias, than than the one from Malcolmus.
But if you're in to make a case for why
Malcolm's is better than uh Corgan, or at least the

(49:06):
pro Malcolmus case, what would what would you say? Well,
first of all, I think that you know, in the
case of range Life, I don't think that he was
trying to start uh, you know, twenty five year blood
feud with Billy Corgan. You know, I really think that
it was a spontaneous gesture that made his friends laugh

(49:27):
and that he saw us harmless, And I think it
is harmless on its own. Um, it's just that he
was dealing with someone who again is just you know,
maybe the most insecure person ever uh to be a
rock star. And that says a lot, because there's a
lot of insecure rock stars. But it's hard for me
to think of someone more deserving of that title than

(49:48):
Billy Corgan. Um. I think it's funny too. I always
think about Stone Tuple of Pilots. You know, we were
talking about them earlier, the Elegant Bachelor's thing. Like they
never really reacted to it that I'm aware of. I mean,
they certainly didn't, you know, maybe they talked about it
in private or mentioned an interview here or there, but
it didn't become as tied to them as it did

(50:10):
dis mention Pumpkins just because, like like Scott Wiland, I
don't think he ever really complained about it. And even
like with Scott Wiland died, Pavement went on their Facebook
page and they paid tribute to Scott Wiland. I don't
know if you saw that, but they wrote this post
that said, rest peacefully Scott Wiland. In no way, shape
or form, did we ever want to add to your misery,

(50:31):
which is like kind of funny. Yeah, it's kind of strange,
but um. And again, you know I said this earlier,
this whole dichotomy between like the try hard Billy Corgan
and like the slacker Stephen Malchomius, I think that's kind
of a false dichotomy and you can see that and

(50:53):
how their careers have played out. Steven Malkmus is actually,
I think, put out like a lot more albums than
than Billy Corgan has over the course of these last
several decades, and he's, you know, just continue to be
like a very prolific artist, um and doing it again
on a level where he doesn't have the kind of
luxuries that Billy Corgan has, so I think in a

(51:17):
way again, you can make a case that Stephen Malkmus
is the true populist and Billy Corgan is the elitist.
So that would be my case, I guess for for Malkmus,
I don't know if any of that makes sense to you. No,
it does, I mean it my I think because I
I just came at them from such a different place too,
that I didn't really see the need two to pit

(51:38):
them against one another until actually going back and learning
about this too, because I came to Pavement a lot
later in Smashing Pumpkins, because just from where I lived
in the in the sticks in Massachusetts, like, weren't getting
really many stores that carry Pavement albums, to be honest
with you, and you really here are much in the radio.
Maybe you'd see the one song on MTV or something
like that too. So yeah, I I enjoy their music.

(52:01):
I enjoy his solo stuff too. I really I think
that he's I think I like probably a greater collection
of Malcolm's songs than Billy's at this point, the last
couple of Smashing Pumpkins albums I have been able to
get into at all, Whereas I still think Malcolmus is
what was his most recent album. I'm trying to remember
what was called Techniques. It's familiar this year, right, that's

(52:23):
the one that familiars here. Yeah. Yeah, it's a folkey record.
It's really great. Wit there was a one before that
I also really liked. Anyway, Yeah, I just I think
that that he's consistently maintained great output, whereas Billy I
don't feel it as much. But again, maybe that's just
because I know too much about him. You know. Well,
it's interesting that you said that it's easier for you
to make a pro billy case, which I feel like

(52:45):
it's harder to make a pro Billy Corkin case in
this instance, but like, what, like what would be your
case for him? I totally understand that Stephen Malcolm's is
certainly much happier, better adjusted of these two, and I
don't care. I I sort of have this fondness for
like the slightly unhinged Loan figure with this like ridiculous ambition.

(53:08):
You know, if it's Howard Hughes, if it's Rocky, if
it's Brian Wilson, even if it's just Folly, I just
admire It's like Don Quixote or something. I admire the guts,
I admire the vision, I admire the passion. I admire
the naked earnestness, probably because I see myself in that
in and I don't mean that in a positive way,
but in a realistic way. I just I relate to that.

(53:29):
And I see someone just sort of go for it,
even if it's awkward, and even if they look, you know,
weird doing it. It's just inspiring, you know, even if
they are a dumpster fire of a human being, which
you know is usually the case. When you mix like
ruthless ambition with sort of an unstable personality, you get
your feel specters, you get your Brian Wilson's, you get
your Hitler's. But but it's his music is so compelling

(53:50):
to me. It's just so grandiose, the fifty guitar parts
and just the image of him sort of alone doing it.
I first learned about um Philly Corgan in a Rian
Wilson documentary, and he was just talking about his admiration
for Brian Wilson, and he was talking about Brian doing
pet sounds and how he he he he stepped out
from his band, stepped out from his family to make

(54:12):
the music that he wanted to hear. That's not genius,
that's just guts of the words he said. And I
always always stuck with me, And that's what I always
think of when I think of him. You know that
I admire and even if it's wrong, which in I'm
not saying that he's been the most easy to get
along with bandmate or anything like that. But in addition

(54:32):
to commercial superiority, which you know obviously helped define the
sound of nineties mainstream rock, and the fact I just
think I love his songs more, I just give him
the edge for probably the really the very thing that
a lot of people dinged him for, which is his ambition. Yeah,
I don't agree with that. I guess I don't think
they deemed him for his ambition. I think people love
his ambition. And the case I would make is very

(54:53):
similar to yours. I love him when he's really grandiose
and it's actually working. You know, I would say that
like Pavement overall, I prefer their catalog. I think they
have a more consistent body of work. But the peaks
for smashing Pumpkins are better than Pavements peaks, and again
signs Dream of Melancholo and The Infinite Sadness are like

(55:14):
two amazing records that I love. The reason why people
only Billy Corgan is because of himself, because of his personality,
because he's a jerk a lot of the time, and
he's obnoxious a lot of the time. And it pains
me to say that because I respect him as an artist,
but he really is his own worst enemy. And you know,

(55:34):
if he didn't say so many just stupid things, really
an obnoxious thing. Is if he didn't go on Alex
Jones and trade conspiracy theories and all these other things
he people would like him because I think people love
his music and they're even Stephen Malkmus has said nice

(55:55):
things about his music. Um, but I think his personality
gets in the way. And I'm saying this in the
context of a defense of Billy Corgan, so I feel
like I've just criticized again more. But I'll say again,
I think on artistic grounds, his best work ranks with
the best rock of the nineties, and you can't write

(56:16):
a history of alternative rock without a chapter on Smashing Pumpkins,
and with him, I just prefer to focus on the
work because if I think about him too much, it
ends up detracting from my admiration from what he's created.
So in terms of these two guys together, I think
we've hit upon this already where it's not really like

(56:39):
a classic rivalry in a sense of where you feel
like it's a thing. It really was one in sighting
incident from Pavement and then Billy Corgan internalizing that for
a long time afterward. Um, I feel like this is
maybe more interesting for us as fans. And I'm a
fan of both of these bands, and I just thinking

(57:00):
about these two guys as characters and how they stand
in contrast with each other, and in a way you
feel like you can understand something about the other guy
by looking at this guy's faults, you know, or this
guy's attributes. Um, they really are sort of like a
Yin and yang in a way of of nineties indie

(57:22):
and alternative music. A lot of ways too, we also
tend to dislike or resent the people that we see
a lot of the things that we don't like in ourselves,
which I guess negates my my whole defense of Billy Corgan,
as I see a lot of myself in that in
his behavior. But yeah, It's funny how you think that
these two guys, if they could just put aside the differences,
they actually would have a lot more in common than not,

(57:43):
you know, right exactly, Yeah, they they have things in common, um,
except one guy seems comfortable in his own skin and
the other one absolutely does not. And that's how you
end up. Sometimes you just see one guy who is
kind of surly to have a fight, and that's what

(58:04):
you have here. Uh. But Jordans want you to know that, Uh,
while you are a nature kid, I think you do
have a function and you are very well. You're not
a bachelor, but you're very elegant and seven I appreciate that.
I mean that with all the love in my heart.
Today is the greatest day I've ever known. Steven, that

(58:24):
really that that means a lot. You say that. All right, everybody, Well,
this has been another episode of Rivals. Thank you so
much for listening. We'll be back with more conflicts and
beefs next week. I'm gonna go listen to Siame's dream now.

(58:46):
Rivals is a production of My Heart Radio. The executive
producers are Shawn ty Toone and Noel Brown. The supervising
producers are Taylor t Cooin and Tristan McNeil. I'm Jordan's
Roun Talk. I'm Stephen Hyden. If you like what you heard,
please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcast
or my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

(59:07):
H